NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

The Land of Crater Chains

This image, taken with the Narrow Angle Camera (NAC), gives us a close-up view of newly named Stevenson crater. One of the 23 Mercury craters recently assigned names by the IAU, Stevenson crater was named in honor of Robert Louis Stevenson, the nineteenth century author best known for The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as well as A Child's Garden of Verses, a classic collection of poems including The Swing and The Land of Counterpane. Stevenson crater is known for the distinct X-shape made by the secondary crater chains crisscrossing its floor, the result of falling ejecta from two primary impacts outside the field of view.

Date acquired:April 10, 2012

Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington