Matisse Crater (HR)

As NASA’s MESSENGER approached Mercury on January 14, 2008, the Spacecraft took this image of the Crater Matisse. Named for the French artist Henri Matisse, Matisse crater was imaged during the Mariner 10 Mission and is about 130 miles in diameter. Matisse crater is in the Southern Hemisphere and can be seen near the Terminator of the Planet (the line between the sunlit, day side and the dark, night side).

On Mercury, craters are named for people, now deceased, who have made contributions to the Humanities, such as Artists, Musicians, Painters and Authors. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) oversees the official process of naming new craters and other new features discovered on bodies throughout the Solar System. Scientists studying and mapping unnamed features can suggest names for consideration by the IAU. The 1213 images taken by MESSENGER during its first flyby encounter with Mercury cover a large region of Mercury's surface previously unseen by spacecraft, revealing many new craters and other features that will need to be named.