mercury fly by

just had a quick look at Reuters news ageny article on MESSENGER mission to Mercury, It flew past the planet at 16.000MPH and was only slightly out of position. first data expected to be transmitted today - Tuesday. but it will be probably later in the month before us mere mortals get sight of any significant info.



"Captain Slog, star date 150108"

Cassini / Huygens data was available on-line within hours of it being picked up by NASA's DSN - In fact I remember an amateur group of image processors beat the Cassini / Huygens team to publishing the first processed panoramas of Titan from the descent phase!

Phil.

Philip, your probably not far wrong. there seems to be a wealth of expertise within the amatur astronomy community.

*Topics merged*

See the countdown clock at the Messenger site:

www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/messenger/main/index.html

A little over 6 hours to go as I write.

check out the animated sequence of the Messenger approach to Mercury in the link....

A great photo and great detail on the NASA news page (Mercury Messanger Mission). For all the solar system, you could be looking at our own Moon in that shot. I notice that in comparison to our own Moon - impact craters look smaller?, might be my next wallpaper