Massive Mosaic of Mercury

By Nancy Atkinson - October 5, 2009 at 12:57 PM UTC | Planetary Science

[/caption] If you want to REALLY see Mercury up close and personal, take a look at this absolutely

HUGE mosaic

of the planet. It was put together by

Jason Perry,

who actually works with the Cassini mission but in his spare time stitched together 66 images from the MDIS narrow angle camera from the MESSENGER mission's second flyby of Mercury in October 2008, along with some data from the Mariner 10 mission in the 1970's.

The full file is 20 MB

, with a resolution of 0.6 kilometers (0.37 miles) per pixel. What fun! ---for us, that is. It took Perry four days just to set up his software, according to

Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog

Enjoy!

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com