Long wait to other side of Mercury nearly over

Hi,

The long wait to see the other hemisphere of Mercury is nearly over.
On Jan 14 next NASA's MESSENGER probe will fly-by Mercury. Eventually MESSENGER (including two more fly-bys) will have slowed enough to enable it to break into orbit around the planet in 2010.

Mercury has only been visted by one probe - Mariner 10, three times in 1974 and 1975.

See messenger.jhuapl.edu/

John

I've been counting down the days for this for the past moth or so now, It should be interesting to see how similar it is to the side we know of.

Our own Irish poet W.B. Yeats has a crater named "Yeats" on Mercury.

Can't think why.......seeing as Yeats hated Astronomers.

This is a quote from a Yeats poem:

"Seek, then,
No learning from the starry men,
Who follow with the optic glass
The whirling ways of stars that pass -
Seek, then, for this is also sooth,
No word of theirs the cold star-bane
Has cloven and rent their hearts in twain,
And dead is all their human truth."

(Dead right too, in my opinion.)

Peter.

Yip, me too...
It's going to be interesting alright...

I recently say the flick 'sunshine' (oh how bad)
but the part where they approached Mercury was very impressive...
Made you realize just how small and HOT is is....

Hi,

Whats the probe going to do map the surface or just read the atmospheric conditions??

There is very little atmosphere to speaks of, it'll map the surface details.