Discovery Quadrangle

Discovery Quadrangle

The Discovery quadrangle lies within the heavily cratered part of Mercury in a region roughly antipodal to the 1550-km-wide Caloris Basin. Like the rest of the heavily cratered part of the planet, the quadrangle contains a spectrum of craters and basins ranging in size from those at the limit of resolution of the best photographs (200 m) to those as much as 350 km across, and ranging in degree of freshness from pristine to severely degraded. Interspersed with the craters and basins both in space and time are plains deposits that are probably of several different origins. Because of its small size and very early segregation into core and crust, Mercury seemingly has been a dead planet for a long time—possibly longer than the Moon. Its geologic history, therefore, records with considerable clarity some of the earliest and most violent events that took place in the inner Solar System.

Read more about Discovery Quadrangle:  Structure, Geologic History

Famous quotes containing the word discovery:

    However backwards the world has been in former ages in the discovery of such points as GOD never meant us to know,—we have been more successful in our own days:Mthousands can trace out now the impressions of this divine intercourse in themselves, from the first moment they received it, and with such distinct intelligence of its progress and workings, as to require no evidence of its truth.
    Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)