Way cool Mercury Picture

[robnissen]

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080130-messenger-flyby-science.html<br /><br />Anyone have any ideas on what would cause this. BTW, it looks more like a tadpole to me than a spider.

 

[weeman]

Some of the lines almost look like they could have been formed from ricocheting objects of some kind. Like when a bullet just skims a flat surface, it takes a bite out of it. Especially the markings in the upper and upper-left portion of the picture.<br /><br />Or, it's from some kind of molten activity from a long time ago. It looks like there's some sort of structure in the center of the crater. Any idea what that could be?<br /><br />This might sound crazy, but has there ever been a case in the solar system where an asteroid hits a planet/moon so hard that it cracks the surface like a broken windshield? If a planet/moon had a highly molten core, and an asteroid hit it hard enough, could it spider-fracture like a baseball hitting a windshield?<br /><br />Totally righteous picture though <img src="/images/icons/cool.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><strong><font color="#ff0000">Techies: We do it in the dark. </font></strong></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>"Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with that special girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.</strong><strong>" -Albert Einstein </strong></font></p> </div>

 

[3488]

It is fantastic image & a really interesting feature.<br /><br />I reckon IMO only, that the impactor struck the centre of the pre-existing Caloris Basin, where<br />previously there had been lava tubes, etc. I think that some of the non radial lines are<br />preexisting lava tubes that collapsed due to the imapact, & the radial lines are due <br />to fracturing caused by the impact, so we are seeing two different features in the same<br />area.<br /><br />The Spider on the MESSENGER site.<br /><br />We will not be seeing this feature again until after orbital insertion in March 2011, as Mercury<br />will be facing the other way for the October 2008 & September 2009 encounters, but<br />we will see the remainder of most of what remains unimaged. <img src="/images/icons/laugh.gif" /><br /><br />Very exciting stuff.<br /><br />Andrew Brown. <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>

 

[vogon13]

The 'tiger scratch' terrrain on Iapetus, in my opinion, is a section of crust 'inflated' from compressional effects of a nearby giant crater basin. The 'scratches' are downrange from the incoming impactors trajectory. The cracks appear to be enormously deep, and are yet one more fascinating oddity on an already extremely weird object.<br /><br />Unfortunately, this terrain on Iapetus is some of the most poorly observed by Cassini, and despite the near uniqueness of the 'tiger scratch' feature in the entire solar system, there are no plans to view it at close range.<br /><br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>

 

[3488]

Approx 620 KM portion of the centre of the Caloris Basin.<br /><br />Thought I would put this here, as it shows The Spider in context of the local area.<br /><br />Andrew Brown. <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>

 

[3488]

I wonder vogon, if the depths of the Tiger Stripes on Iapetus have been determined?<br /><br />Hopefully a close pass can be justified in an extended mission.<br /><br />Andrew Brown. <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>

 

[alokmohan]

Astronomy magazine may help.

 

[bearack]

To me, it appears to be volcanic activity, ancient at that. Looks as if there is a spout in the center and the spider legs are flows. Just speculation on my part.<br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><br /><img id="06322a8d-f18d-4ab1-8ea7-150275a4cb53" src="http://sitelife.space.com/ver1.0/Content/images/store/6/14/06322a8d-f18d-4ab1-8ea7-150275a4cb53.Large.jpg" alt="blog post photo" /></p> </div>

 

[michaelmozina]

]http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?1962IAUS...14..419S>[url]<br /><br />This is one type of explanation that seems to fit most of the key physical parameters. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> It seems to be a natural consequence of our points of view to assume that the whole of space is filled with electrons and flying electric ions of all kinds. - Kristian Birkeland </div>

 

[schmack]

Is it possible that the "spider" feature may have been caused by a molten impactor? given the proximity to the sun and the fact that the impactor may have been doing a few close in laps of the sun before it ran into mercury, it seems to me to be feasable that perhaps the impactor was a liquid instead of a solid and simply "splattered" on impact and made this feature? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font size="4" color="#ff0000"><font size="2">Assumption is the mother of all stuff ups</font> </font></p><p><font size="4" color="#ff0000">Gimme some Schmack Schmack!</font></p> </div>

 

[CalliArcale]

Now there's an interesting idea. Sort of like a cosmic slushball? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[schmack]

mmm, perhaps so?? <br /><br />edit to add - i'd like to hear what meteorwayne has to say about this possibility. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font size="4" color="#ff0000"><font size="2">Assumption is the mother of all stuff ups</font> </font></p><p><font size="4" color="#ff0000">Gimme some Schmack Schmack!</font></p> </div>