Date acquired: December 14, 2011
<p>Image Mission Elapsed Time (MET): 232373246
Image ID: 1136317
Instrument: Wide Angle Camera (WAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
WAC filter: 7 (748 nanometers)
Center Latitude: 58.43°
Center Longitude: 231.7° E
Resolution: 250 meters/pixel
Scale: The basin's main ring is about 126 km (78 mi.) in diameter.
Incidence Angle: 71.5°
Emission Angle: 0.5°
Phase Angle: 71.0°
</p><p>Of Interest: Today's image is a view of Ahmad Baba, a classic mercurian peak-ring basin. Ahmad (Ahmed) Baba was a West African writer who lived from 1556-1627. The Malian city of Timbuktu is home to the Ahmed Baba Institute, a library and research center named in his honor. The Institute is home to over 18,000 ancient manuscripts.
</p>
This image was acquired as part of MDIS's 8-color base map. The 8-color base map is composed of WAC images taken through eight different narrow-band color filters and covers more than 99% of Mercury's surface with an average resolution of 1 kilometer/pixel. The highest-quality color images are obtained for Mercury's surface when both the spacecraft and the Sun are overhead, so these images typically are taken with viewing conditions of low incidence and emission angles.
NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
2013-02-11
<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://messenger.jhuapl.edu/Explore/Science-Images-Database/gallery-image-1078.html">ANCIENT HERITAGE</a>