Mercury, Crescent l NASA MESSENGER l 2008

Cosmic Disco Ball, Mercury ©

The Earth As Seen From

Messenger Spacecraft: Alver crater, Mercury (July 29, 2014)

Leaving Earth Behind

ever wondered what it would look like to fly away from Earth? on its way to Mercury, NASA's Messenger spacecraft did just that and recorded it for us

I collect the final messages of abandoned spacecraft we’ve sent to other celestial bodies, as if they were last words and epitaphs.

I think I’m trying to say, I love you. I will remember you. I will not abandon the memory of you.

I’m trying to say, your existence was necessary, and I am glad for it.

I have days where I think, what will my own last words be?

What will be their legacy? Will somebody care for them? Will somebody tend to them? Shower upon them the kindness of remembrance?

Will I just become a ‘the end’ screen projected onto an unmarked tombstone?

Will I just be a eulogy that ends with good riddance?

This is one of the closest images to the surface of Planet Mercury. It was taken by the Messenger Spacecraft on a close flight to the planet.

Mercurys Sodium Tail : That's no comet. Below the Pleiades star cluster is actually a planet: Mercury. Long exposures of our Solar System's innermost planet may reveal something unexpected: a tail. Mercury's thin atmosphere contains small amounts of sodium that glow when excited by light from the Sun. Sunlight also liberates these molecules from Mercury's surface and pushes them away. The yellow glow from sodium, in particular, is relatively bright. Pictured, Mercury and its sodium tail are visible in a deep image taken last week from La Palma, Spain through a filter that primarily transmits yellow light emitted by sodium. First predicted in the 1980s, Mercury's tail was first discovered in 2001. Many tail details were revealed in multiple observations by NASA's robotic MESSENGER spacecraft that orbited Mercury between 2011 and 2015. Tails, of course, are usually associated with comets. via NASA

Earth and Moon from Mercury captured by NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft.

Enhanced Color Mercury Map l NASA MESSENGER (2004-2015)

This is one of the closest images to the surface of Planet Mercury. It was taken by the Messenger Spacecraft on a close flight to the planet.

Interplanetary Earth

In an interplanetary first, on July 19, 2013 Earth was photographed on the same day from two other worlds of the Solar System, innermost planet Mercury and ringed gas giant Saturn. Pictured on the left, Earth is the pale blue dot just below the rings of Saturn, as captured by the robotic Cassini spacecraft then orbiting the outermost gas giant. On that same day people across planet Earth snapped many of their own pictures of Saturn. On the right, the Earth-Moon system is seen against the dark background of space as captured by the robotic MESSENGER spacecraft, then in Mercury orbit. MESSENGER took its image as part of a search for small natural satellites of Mercury, moons that would be expected to be quite dim. In the MESSENGER image, the Earth (left) and Moon (right) are overexposed and shine brightly with reflected sunlight. Destined not to return to their home world, both Cassini and MESSENGER have since retired from their missions of Solar System exploration.

Messenger Spacecraft: "A Late Holloween," Warhol crater, Mercury (September 23, 2013)

The closest image ever captured of the mesmerizing surface of Planet Mercury, courtesy of the Messenger Spacecraft during its daring rendezvous with the planet. H/t Neil deGrasse Tyson

[Robert Scott Horton]

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“The present issues from the past, and the future from the present. Everything is made one by this continuity. Time is like a circle, where all the points are so linked that one cannot say where it begins or ends, for all points precede and follow one another for ever.” ― Hermes Trismegistus, Corpus Hermeticum