The spectacular image shown here is one of the first to be returned from MESSENGER's second flyby of Mercury. The image shows the departing planet taken about 90 minutes after the spacecraft's closest approach. The bright crater just south of the center of the image is Kuiper, identified on images from the Mariner 10 mission in the 1970s. For most of the terrain east of Kuiper, toward the limb (edge) of the planet, the departing images are the first spacecraft views of that portion of Mercury's surface.
NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
<a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/multimedia/display.cfm?IM_ID=7543">http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/multimedia/display.cfm?IM_ID=7543</a>