Mercury's Surface: Preliminary Description and Interpretation from Mariner 10 Pictures

Murray, Bruce C.; Belton, M. J. S.; Danielson, G. E.; Davies, Merton E.; Gault, D. E.; Hapke, Bruce; O'Leary, Brian; Strom, R. G.; Suomi, V. E.; Trask, N.J.

doi:10.1126/science.185.4146.169

Cited by 146 publications

(83 citation statements)

References 17 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Guest (1975, p. 2463) defined the ICP as 'level to gently rolling ground between and around large craters and basins' (Figure 4). This is the most widespread unit on Mercury and is thought to be the remnants of volcanic flows by most authors Kiefer & Murray, 1987;Murray et al, 1974Murray et al, , 1975Spudis & Guest, 1988;Strom, 1977;Whitten, Head, Denevi, & Solomon, 2014). The emplacement of ICP predates the end of the Late Heavy Bombardment (e.g.…”

Section: Mapped Geologic Provincesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geology of the Victoria quadrangle (H02), Mercury

et al. 2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Mercury's quadrangle H02 'Victoria' is located in the planet's northern hemisphere and lies between latitudes 22.5°N and 65°N, and between longitudes 270°E and 360°E. This quadrangle covers 6.5% of the planet's surface with a total area of almost 5 million km 2 . Our 1:3,000,000-scale geologic map of the quadrangle was produced by photo-interpretation of remotely sensed orbital images captured by the MESSENGER spacecraft. Geologic contacts were drawn between 1:300,000 and 1:600,000 mapping scale and constitute the boundaries of intercrater, intermediate and smooth plains units; in addition, three morpho-stratigraphic classes of craters larger than 20 km were mapped. The geologic map reveals that this area is dominated by Intercrater Plains encompassing some almost-coeval, probably younger, Intermediate Plains patches and interrupted to the north-west, north-east and east by the Calorian Northern Smooth Plains. This map represents the first complete geologic survey of the Victoria quadrangle at this scale, and an improvement of the existing 1:5,000,000 Mariner 10-based map, which covers only 36% of the quadrangle. ARTICLE HISTORY

show abstract

Section: Mapped Geologic Provincesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geology of the Victoria quadrangle (H02), Mercury

et al. 2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…(Murray et al, 1974b;Strom et al, 1975). From the morphology and dimensions of these scarps and from their transection relationships, the features have been interpreted as thrust faults indicative of planetwide compressive stresses.…”

Section: Is There a Core?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The compressive stage in Mercury's history apparently began at least by the end of the period of heavy bombardment of the surface and continued after the later ( but perhaps overlapping) period of emplacement of the smooth plains, thought to be of volcanic origin . Both L Murray et al (1974b) and Strom et al, (1975) speculate that the planetary compression may be the result of core s,irinkage.…”

Section: Is There a Core?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Some aspects of core formation in Mercury

Solomon

1976

Icarus

107

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…Optical searches within a radius of at least 150 000 km from Mercury (corresponding to 4 at maximal elongation from the Sun) are thus motivated and should be able to detect objects of 1 km size or smaller. A search for mercurian satellites on Mariner 10 images has shown that the existence of objects larger than 5 km within 30 Hermeocentric radii is improbable (Murray et al 1974).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolution of Mercury-like orbits: A numerical study

Warell

Karlsson

Skoglöv

2003

A&A

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. The orbital evolution of ∼30 000 objects has been studied numerically for time scales of up to 11 Myr in order to investigate the dynamical importance of Mercury on objects with orbits similar to the planet's, as well as the existence of stable hermeocentric orbits. We find that Mercury, despite its small mass, exhibits a strong dynamical influence on objects with heliocentric Mercury-like orbits. The orbits of such objects may become temporarily and repeatedly Trojan-like for durations exceeding 20 kyr, exhibiting horseshoe orbits in the 1:1 resonance with periods of around 60 years. Objects with Mercury-like orbits may evolve dynamically to Venus crossers on time scales of 50-100 kyr by successive close encounters with Mercury which quasi-instantaneously increase the semimajor axis and cause subsequent capture in strong secular resonances, which force the eccentricity to high values. Initially, all particles were located in the ν 1 and ν 11 resonances which strongly affect their dynamical evolution. Only objects for which the semimajor axis and eccentricity were significantly increased due to close encounters with Mercury escaped these resonances. The effects on the orbital elements of close approaches within the Hill radius of Mercury are generally minor and their values are then unlikely to change significantly. The largest changes to the orbital elements at such events occur for Hill sphere traverse times of 2 days, when a, e and i may change by as much as 0.07 AU, 0.13 and 3.5 • . However, secular resonances are generally considerably more efficient in affecting the orbital elements, particularly ν 2 and ν 12 . We find retrograde and prograde hermeocentric orbits which are stable for durations in eccess of 4.5 Myr for initial semimajor axes <30 Mercury radii. Retrograde orbiters are stable for longer time scales than prograde. Collisions with Mercury occur for heliocentric objects, temporarily captured objects and for large hermeocentric orbits of both senses of motion. Gravitational scattering by Venus may constitute a possible route for transporting mercurian meteorites to Earth. We estimate the number of objects presently with orbits similar to that of Mercury and find that the current existence of such an object in the region has a low probability. We suggest an observational approach that would make the detection of hermeocentric objects larger than 1 km possible with a moderately sized telescope.

show abstract

Mercury's Surface: Preliminary Description and Interpretation from Mariner 10 Pictures

Cited by 146 publications

References 17 publications

Geology of the Victoria quadrangle (H02), Mercury

Geology of the Victoria quadrangle (H02), Mercury

Some aspects of core formation in Mercury

Evolution of Mercury-like orbits: A numerical study

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About