English: Date acquired: August 27, 2012

Image Mission Elapsed Time (MET): 254595873 Image ID: 2471459 Instrument: Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) Center Latitude: 3.83° Center Longitude: 65.23° E Resolution: 66 meters/pixel Scale: The horizontal field of view in this image is approx. 80 km (50 mi.) across Incidence Angle: 64.6° Emission Angle: 29.2° Phase Angle: 93.8°

Of Interest: Firdousi crater, located close to Mercury's equator, is a flat-floored crater that may have been filled with volcanic material subsequent to its formation. Although many craters on Mercury are filled with impact melt, the shallow depth of Firdousi suggests that lava is the culprit, almost entirely obscuring its central peak and covering many of the landslide deposits around the crater's inner wall. Firdousi is also surrounded by prominent secondary crater chains, many of which have haloes of high-reflectance, relatively blue ejecta.

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 200-meter/pixel morphology base map. It is not possible to cover all of Mercury's surface at this high resolution, but typically several areas of high scientific interest are imaged in this mode each week.