MESSENGER: New Images Shed Light on Mercury's Geological History, Surface Textures

Even in a very pastel kind of way, this is certainly a whole lot
better science worthy look-see at Mercury. However, too bad their
extremely pastel image of such pathetic DR(dynamic range) is still so
contrast or depth of hue limited. Remember the albedo of 0.12 is
getting this moon like orb nearly as dark as coal.

http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/...00_700_430.png

PhotoShop: c1000_700_430.png
* Embedded: ColorMatch RGB ("use the embedded profile")

Image Adjustments: Hue Saturation
EDIT: MASTER
HUE: 0
SATURATION: +75
LIGHTNESS: -5

Image Size: RESAMPLE 2X (2048 X 2048)
Filter Image: UNSHARP MASK = 100%
RADIUS: 2
THRESHOLD: 4
Filter: SHARPEN (once)

There's a little more PhotoShop work if you'd like to see those
atmospheric related artifacts. Of course the raw image itself would
have been so much better off if we were ever given the full DR worth
of pixel data to work with.

Mercury atmosphe c1000_700_430.png @1X or 2X
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/...00_700_430.png

PhotoShop: Replace Color
FUZZINESS: 200
HUE: 0
SATURATION: +100
LIGHTNESS: +10 up to +50

- Brad Guth



On Jan 21, 5:49 am, Peter Evans -
berlin.de wrote:
On 2008-01-18, Katipo wrote:

Firstly we are told it has taken three and a half years for Messenger to
reach Mercury. That planet is about twice the distance from Earth that Mars
is, yet we can reach Mars in around nine months. That just doesn't add up.

We are also being told that now the craft is there it is going to take
another three years, during which Messenger, as I understand it, it is going
to come all the way back to earth, to get it into orbit!!!!

Not quite. It did do a fly-by of the Earth in August 2005, a
year after being launched. You might find the information athttp://messenger.jhuapl.edu/faq/faq_journey.html
helpful. When they send probes to Mars, they can travel "non-stop"
without any fly-bys en route. Each fly-by involves a good part
of another orbit around the sun in getting from one planetary
encounter to the next, and each orbit takes months (when
MESSENGER is closer to the sun) to a year or more (when MESSENGER's
orbit is near the Earth's.

The top right picture athttp://messenger.jhuapl.edu/whereis/index.php
shows the numerous orbits around the sun required.

Cheers,
P.

--
Peter Evans pevans -at- math -dot- hu-berlin -dot- de
Berlin, Germany