# Fly over Mercury with BepiColombo ESA501304

See Mercury in a whole new light, through the ‘eyes’ of the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo spacecraft, as it sped past Mercury during its latest encounter on 4 September 2024. During the flyby, BepiColombo’s three monitoring cameras (M-CAMs) captured detailed images of the planet’s cratered surface. Within these images, Mercury scientists identified various geological features that BepiColombo will study in more detail once in orbit around the planet. One such feature, shown in this video, is the newly named Stoddart crater. The name ‘Stoddart’ – after artist Margaret Olrog Stoddart (1865–1934) – was recently assigned following a request from the M-CAM team, who realised that this crater would be visible in these images and decided it would be worth naming considering its potential interest for scientists in the future. Stoddart is a special type of crater called a ‘peak ring basin’. These mysterious craters are created by powerful asteroid or comet impacts, and are named after the inner ring of peaks on an otherwise flattish floor. The video then pans around to the larger Raphael crater. Many newer craters dot the surface and walls of Raphel, giving an indication of Mercury’s violent history. At the end of the video the camera zooms out to put the region into perspective. The 3D scene was reconstructed from a single image using the ‘Shape from Shading’ method. Shape from Shading uses a reflectance model to render an artificial image of the surface from an initial 3D model. This…

- Kind: Short
- Year: 2024
- Runtime: 1 min
- By: European Space Agency
- Genres: Space
- Archive: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fly_over_Mercury_with_BepiColombo_ESA501304.webm)
- Licence or status: [CC BY-SA 3.0 igo](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/igo/deed.en) (as the archive states it)
- Credit: European Space Agency
- Who can watch: Tweens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/commons/158943887?play=1)