This image, taken by the NASA - MESSENGER Spacecraft now orbiting around the Planet Mercury, shows a Pond (such as, as we said yesterday, a "lake-like" Surface Feature) of Impact Melt that was ejected from an Unnamed Crater just out of view. The Impact Melt ponded in this low, forming a smooth surface similar to the Melt Ponds visible to the South of Kuiper Crater or near the Outer Rim of Eminescu Crater. North is toward the upper right corner of the frame.

Just out of curiosity, we wish to draw to your attention the fact that the picture, as you can easily notice, seems (actually it is) slightly out of focus. The reason? Not a mistake of the camera, but just an effect caused by the simultaneous combination of three factors: the speed of the Spacecraft, the distance of the Spacecraft from the Surface and the exposure time (this effect is also known as "speed-related fuzziness").

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-Km/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.

Date acquired: November 06, 2011
Image Mission Elapsed Time (MET): 229105038
Image ID: 980525
Instrument: Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
Center Latitude: 63,9° North
Center Longitude: 256,5° East
Resolution: 16 meters/pixel
Scale: the Pond is approximately 3 Km (about 1,9 miles) across
Solar Incidence Angle: 69,5° (meaning that the Sun wss about 20,5° above the Local Horizon when the picture was taken)
Emission Angle: 15,6°
Sun-Mercury-MESSENGER (such as "Phase") Angle: 85,2°