Image: Balanchine crater in Caloris Basin

Description: NASA image acquired October 28, 2011 This stunning crater, now called Balanchine, lies within the Caloris basin. Its floor provides another example of the beautiful "hollows" found on Mercury and has an etched appearance similar to that found in the crater Tyagaraja. This image was acquired as a high-resolution targeted observation. Targeted observations are images of a small area on Mercury's surface at resolutions much higher than the 250-meter/pixel (820 feet/pixel) morphology base map or the 1-kilometer/pixel (0.6 miles/pixel) color base map. It is not possible to cover all of Mercury's surface at this high resolution during MESSENGER's one-year mission, but several areas of high scientific interest are generally imaged in this mode each week. The MESSENGER spacecraft is the first ever to orbit the planet Mercury, and the spacecraft's seven scientific instruments and radio science investigation are unraveling the history and evolution of the Solar System's innermost planet. Visit the Why Mercury? section of this website to learn more about the key science questions that the MESSENGER mission is addressing. During the one-year primary mission, MDIS is scheduled to acquire more than 75,000 images in support of MESSENGER's science goals. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington NASA image use policy
Title: Balanchine crater in Caloris Basin
Credit: Flickr: MESSENGER View of Mercury's Caloris Basin
Author: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Permission: This image, which was originally posted to Flickr, was uploaded to Commons using Flickr upload bot on 17 November 2011, 22:00 by PDTillman. On that date, it was confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the license indicated. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. You are free: to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work to remix – to adapt the work Under the following conditions: attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 CC BY 2.0 Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 truetrue
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