<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'><font color="#ff0000">New images are coming in rapidly now... <font color="#000080">
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/index.php </font><br /> Posted by MeteorWayne</font></DIV></p><p><font size="2"><strong>Thank you very much Wayne. From work I was dragged around ASDA (owned by Wal Mart, which I'm sure most of you are familiar with) for shopping </strong></font><img src="http://sitelife.space.com/ver1.0/content/scripts/tinymce/plugins/emotions/images/smiley-surprised.gif" border="0" alt="Surprised" title="Surprised" /><font size="2"><strong>(what a chore, guess she's trying to domesticate me). </strong></font><img src="http://sitelife.space.com/ver1.0/content/scripts/tinymce/plugins/emotions/images/smiley-laughing.gif" border="0" alt="Laughing" title="Laughing" /><font size="2"><strong>I like that one of Machaut Crater. I had heard of it before as during the Mariner 10 pass, the Sun was almost at the zenith & was not well seen as the contrast as you know is low with little or no shadow, etc. MESSENGER got it beautifully.</strong></font></p><p><font size="2"><strong>Yes MESSENGER has sent back bucket loads today. Total 100% success this mission has been so far. What grabs me was the distance at which the ejecta rays travelled. The Surface gravity on Mercury (37.7%), is almost dead equal to that of Mars (37.8%), a difference of only one part in three hundred & seventy.</strong></font></p><p><font size="2"><strong>I had a fascinating talk with Dr Ralph McNutt this morning (for him it was a lot earlier than it was for me), & we had the most fascinating conversation, were we discussed the performance of MESSENGER, the telemetry, all systems were well within tolerances, solar activity, lack of evidence of hermean moons & also from June to early October, MESSENGER was carrying out a systematic search for vulcanoids. </strong></font></p><p><font size="2"><strong>Vulcanoids came up blank, though the search will resume later this year. I mentioned that I was not surpised by that result, as impacts will liberate debris & the solar energy & the solar wind would remove it, hence 'eroding' them, unless they are fairly large. 40 KM or larger across, when they would have enough gravity to hold onto a regolith which MDIS could easily find against the blackness of space despite the proximity of the Sun (from Mercury's orbit, of course they would attain a far greater elongation, where as from Earth, maximum elongation is only about 7 degrees, where as from Mercury about 21 degrees).<br /></strong></font></p><p><font size="2"><strong>We also spoke about the volcanic plains & that there a lot more of them in the north & he agreed with me that Mercury does appear to be assymetric, bulging slightly in the south, like Mars, though really we will not know for sure until MESSENGER takes up hermeocentric orbit & builds a complete global elevation map of Mercury, like Magellan did with Venus & the MGS MOLA did with Mars. We will have similar for Mercury & finally figure out the tallest peak & the lowest point on the first rock from the Sun & what the elevation difference will tell us about the mechanical strength of Mercury's crust. </strong></font> </p><p><strong><font size="1"><font size="2">Very interesting.</font> </font></strong></p><p><strong><font size="2">Will be keeping a watch out this evening for more images. I thin for the foreseeable I can see a few being released daily. So now we've seen 95.7% of Mercury. The September 2009 pass will only add another 2%, but MESSENGER woll be passing more slowly enabling for targetted observations based on the images from this encounter.</font></strong></p><p><strong><font size="2">When MESSENGER approaches Mercury for the final time, the orientation of Mercury will also be very similar to how it was today & in September 2009. Of course from March 18th 2011, MESSENGER becomes a hermean moon & Mercury will be slowly rotationg beneath MESSENGER's orbit, se we will get to see the entire surface over time. </font></strong></p><p><strong><font size="2">Andrew Brown. </font></strong></p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080">"I suddenly noticed an anomaly to the left of Io, just off the rim of that world. It was extremely large with respect to the overall size of Io and crescent shaped. It seemed unbelievable that something that big had not been visible before".</font> <em><strong><font color="#000000">Linda Morabito </font></strong><font color="#800000">on discovering that the Jupiter moon Io was volcanically active. Friday 9th March 1979.</font></em></p><p>
<font size="1" color="#000080">http://www.launchphotography.com/</font><br /><br />
<font size="1" color="#000080">http://anthmartian.googlepages.com/thisislandearth</font></p><p>
<font size="1" color="#000080">http://web.me.com/meridianijournal</font></p> </div>