English: Date acquired: August 07, 2012

Image Mission Elapsed Time (MET): 252814064, 252814056, 252814060
Image ID: 2344652, 2344650, 2344651
Instrument: Wide Angle Camera (WAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
WAC filters: 9, 7, 6 (996, 748, 433 nanometers) in red, green, and blue
Center Latitude: -14.85°
Center Longitude: 25.55° E
Resolution: 476 meters/pixel
Scale: Ellington basin is 216 km (134 mi.) in diameter.
Incidence Angle: 19.3°
Emission Angle: 8.7°
Phase Angle: 28.0°

Of Interest: Ellington basin, named in 2012 for American jazz legend Duke Ellington (1899-1974), is a peak ring basin covered in secondary craters. The prominent crater Berkel lies inside of the basin. Berkel's ejecta and floor exhibit differences in reflectance and color, indicating a heterogeneous local stratigraphy. This image was created by merging a color image with a monochrome image, in order to emphasize both the topography and the color of the area.

The color portion of this image was acquired as part of MDIS's high-resolution 3-color imaging campaign. The 3-color campaign is a major mapping activity in MESSENGER's extended mission. It complements the 8-color base map (at an average resolution of 1 km/pixel) acquired during MESSENGER's primary mission by imaging Mercury's surface in a subset of the color filters at the highest resolution possible. The three narrow-band color filters are centered at wavelengths of 430 nm, 750 nm, and 1000 nm, and image resolutions generally range from 100 to 400 meters/pixel in the northern hemisphere.

The monochrome portion of this image is part of MDIS's high-resolution surface morphology base map. The surface morphology base map covers more than 90% of Mercury's surface with an average resolution of 250 meters/pixel (0.16 miles/pixel or 820 feet/pixel). Images acquired for the surface morphology base map typically have off-vertical Sun angles (i.e., high incidence angles) and visible shadows so as to reveal clearly the topographic form of geologic features.