Collapse Pit-Chain inside Picasso Crater (Absolute Natural Colors; credits for the additional process. and color.: Dr Paolo C. Fienga - Lunexit Team)

The Crater pictured in the center of this image was recently named Picasso, in honor of the Spanish painter and sculptor Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). This Crater, first imaged during MESSENGER's third Mercury Fly-By, has drawn scientific attention because of the large, arc-shaped Pit-Chain located on the Eastern side of its Floor. Similar Pits have been discovered on the Floors of several other Mercurian Craters, such as Beckett and Gibran. These Pits are postulated to have formed when subsurface magma subsided or drained, causing the surface to collapse into the resulting void. If this interpretation is correct, Pit-Floor Craters - such as Picasso - provide evidence of shallow magmatic activity in Mercury's history.

Date Acquired: September 29, 2009
Instrument: Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
Resolution: 500 meters/pixel (0,31 miles/pixel)
Scale: the diameter of Picasso is roughly 133 Km (about 83 miles)
Projection: This image is a portion of the NAC approach mosaic from Mercury Fly-By n. 3. It is shown in a simple cylindrical map projection.