Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

Uploader comment: This image, taken with the Narrow Angle Camera (NAC), shows a simple crater within Rembrandt Basin. Running through the crater is a lobate scarp, formed as Mercury's large iron core cooled and contracted, generating compressive forces that pushed one section of the planet's crust over the top of another section. Determining the geometry of such scarps and the time periods when deformation occurred can help scientists to understand the thermal history of the planet. This image was acquired as a high-resolution targeted observation. Targeted observations are images of a small area on Mercury's surface at resolutions much higher than the 250-meter/pixel (820 feet/pixel) morphology base map or the 1-kilometer/pixel (0.6 miles/pixel) color base map. It is not possible to cover all of Mercury's surface at this high resolution during MESSENGER's one-year mission, but several areas of high scientific interest are generally imaged in this mode each week.

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