The Unseen Face Beheld

[krpalmer]

I noticed via the Bad Astronomy weblog that the pictures of Mercury from MESSENGER would be coming in slowly, but there was a promise of some sorts of there being at least one in the near future... and this morning, on the off chance, I checked out the Planetary Society weblog and indeed saw that first picture. As I had sort of expected, that new stretch of Mercury's face didn't look that much different from what's already been seen close up, and yet that sense of "human eyes have never viewed it like this!" did strike me. Still, I suppose I did have to be told about its particularly interesting features, even as more pictures keep coming in. Mercury doesn't have the visibly darker patches that mark our own moon; its charms are subtler.

Comments

[may-child.livejournal.com]

Looks like the moon.

A couple of years ago, there was another update of "The Grand Tour," aka the "tour" of the solar system, with photographs taken from various space probes and artists' representations. I had the version that came out in 1994, but the newest version had the most current info.

Quite fascinating. You probably already know this, but in the section pertaining to Mercury, it said that there may actually be ice on its surface, in crater walls that are permanently shaded from the sun.

[krpalmer.livejournal.com]

For me, I guess, it's a sense of "like and yet unlike": even the far side of our moon has some dark splotches on it. Still, in looking at the pictures again today, I seemed to see more subtle detail.

I've seen that latest revision of "The Grand Tour" (and, years ago, the first version published in the early 1980s, following the Voyager flybys of Jupiter and Saturn), although I think I probably heard about the possibility of there being some ice hidden at Mercury's poles somewhere else. It reminds me of the hopes that there's also some ice at the poles of our moon, but perhaps also a tiny bit of the old visions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_in_fiction#.22Old_Mercury.22) of a Mercury that had one side forever turned to the heat of the Sun and the other in eternal darkness...