Newly named Abedin crater in Mercury's north

Wed Aug 12, 2009 at 15:50 UTC

This impact crater in the high northern latitudes of Mercury was recently named for the Bangladeshi painter Zainul Abedin (1914-1976). The image was taken with MESSENGER's Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) on October 6, 2008.

Abedin exhibits a complex crater structure with a smooth floor, wall terraces, and a central peak complex. The chains of smaller craters surrounding Abedin are secondary craters formed by ejecta from the initial impact.

The northwestern (upper left in this view) section of Abedin's continuous ejecta blanket appears to have a lower reflectance than the rest of the material adjacent to the crater rim. This pattern suggests that the darker material resided at some depth beneath the northwestern portion of the pre-impact target area and was excavated and redeposited during the crater's formation.

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington