Mercury's Permanently Shadowed Polar Craters
Shown in red are areas of Mercury’s north polar region that are in shadow in all images acquired by MESSENGER to date. Image coverage, and mapping of shadows, is incomplete near the pole. The polar deposits imaged by Earth-based radar are in yellow, and the background image is the mosaic of MESSENGER images. This comparison indicates that all of the polar deposits imaged by Earth-based radar are located in areas of persistent shadow as documented by MESSENGER images.
Image showing areas on Mercury that are never illuminated by sunlight
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Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington/National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, Arecibo Observatory
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Release date
This page was originally published on Tuesday, October 22, 2013.
This page was last updated on Tuesday, November 14, 2023 at 12:24 AM EST.