bba,
It seems their fancy dancy CCDs (of the very best our moneys could buy
at the time) along with those more so spendy and subsequently terrific
optics w/optional spectrum filters for one of the two cameras are
actually not very good at all. After all folks, from an ideal vantage
point of being fully capable of having imaged Earth along with our moon
as recorded within the same frame, or even of having provided
individual frames using the exact same camera, lens and exposure that
any two-bit PhotoShop could combined into a true to life side by side
look-see, it seems that of whatever fell below the worth of 10% albedo
simply didn't record hardly at all, yet above that threshold it seemed
perfectly fine and dandy. In fact, of individual pixels exceeding much
greater than 75% albedo (such as Venus) seemed to have also been
diminished if not also missing in action. I'd have to say, that's
offering pretty crapy dynamic range.

Therefore, we have thus far obtained those terrific pastel images of
mother Earth, that which a good dosage of PhotoShop can greatly improve
upon the information, but we're pretty much stuck whatever the limited
DR worth of information that we had to start with.

Apparently the typically dark brownish and in places somewhat deep
bluish elements of moon that's somewhat basalt dark and nasty as
perhaps a chunk of carbon/soot covered coal might tend to look, whereas
such the level of 7.5% albedo simply wasn't even there to behold.

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory built and
operates the MESSENGER spacecraft and manages the Discovery-class
mission for NASA.
Hopefully by the time our spendy MESSENGER gets into orbiting Mercury,
that somehow those defective CCD cameras and of their poorly performing
optics will have been magically corrected.
-
Brad Guth