Crashed UFO on Mercury???

Full Size Image

As mentioned...it appears very unusual in the context of the full size image. It doesn't look to be a geological feature of Mercury; looking instead like an impactor. There are craters (Golubkna and Barton) on Venus that have a crater with a central peak from impactor and crust material.

I wonder if it's what's left of a stony-iron or iron meteorite?? Although rare, they are out there...the largest recovered on Earth is 60 tons of scrap metal.

We could do with an ID of the image to help explain the object and context. I can see where it could look like a crashed craft, but if you shift your perspective it becomes a convex crater with impact debris forming the darl material. Good find

EDIT to complain about taking too long to post and reading that Sunny Girl has nailed it!

reply to post by Sunnygirl

Good work finding the image source I'm gonna have to start improving my post time and not wandering off to do stuff

[edit on 7-7-2009 by Kandinsky]

reply to post by Kandinsky


I have already provided the image ID, it is PIA11389, and you can find full-res versions of it here:

photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov...

(Edit for spelling.)

[edit on 7-7-2009 by Sunnygirl]

reply to post by Sunnygirl
I know! I was editing my post to say just that...credit always goes where it's due

Woa. Did anyone else notice that if you look behind the object in question there seems to be some markings on the surface left from impact.

Don't meteors usually disintegrate on impact, hence there is nothing left to show for it except a crater and ejecta... This thing is whole... weird.

reply to post by DaMod


well true but not always the case honestly though i dont know, i gather it would depend on the lack of atmosphere as thats what normally breaks down a meteor as it enters
could be way off base there though meteor stuff aint my good point lol

its definatly an object from what i can see, whether its from space or actually part of mercury is another question

These aliens are some of the crappiest pilots Ive ever seen. Every planet you go to supposedly has a crashed UFO wreck on it

Originally posted by Matt.Trakker
These aliens are some of the crappiest pilots Ive ever seen. Every planet you go to supposedly has a crashed UFO wreck on it

Just imagine how many crashed UFOs we'd find on Earth if it wasn't for all the water and trees and glaciers hiding them.

found this article of a 2nd flyby messenger done, www.mercurytoday.com...

alot of good articles about mercury on it worth lookin through and reading perhaps we would get some sort of answers

www.mercurytoday.com...

Not ready to call it a crashed ufo, but to me, it looks like a large boulder.

I would imaging the primary reasons a craft would crash on mercury would be.

1. The sun's gravitational field screwed up its telemetry.

2. The intense heat from the sun basically fried internal components.

3. For methods of interstellar travel you would either have to go ftl or do a space time bend. Even a microscopic miscalculation could be dire. They could have been aiming for Jupiter and landed right at the face of mercury.

4. Pilot Error. (just because they are advanced doesn't make them infallible)

In fact due to 1. and 2. being so much more severe in that particular part of the solar system, i would say it is more likely they crashed here rather than other places.

NOW i know why we've never found a UFO.
apparently aliens fly giant rocks around and crash them into everything

reply to post by ELECTRICkoolaidZOMBIEtest


you never know.... it could happen you know

Originally posted by ELECTRICkoolaidZOMBIEtest
NOW i know why we've never found a UFO.
apparently aliens fly giant rocks around and crash them into everything

It's funny how people think an advanced race couldn't make mistakes, or that their equipment cannot be influenced by very powerful outside forces like the intense gravitational field of the sun. Why?

Prove it is a rock.

[edit on 7-7-2009 by DaMod]

Does look weird... I take these sort of pictures with a pinch of salt though, there's plenty of weird pictures where people are like 'OH MY FRIGGING GOD, ITS A SPACESHIP/LOST CITY/BARNEY THE DINOSAUR'.. and it just turns out to be a rock formation thats just unusually shaped, or an effect thats been caused by the size of the pixels.

Actually thats a thought, does anyone know what the size of this 'thing' is?

reply to post by Bluebelle


Visit this link to read what NASA has to say about it. The entire image this object is in is

Scale: This image is about 270 kilometers (170 miles) across
Spacecraft Altitude: 10,200 kilometers (6,300 miles)

So it is a pretty big object.. whatever it is..

NASA has tried to explain it away by comparing it to other 'dark patches' on Mercury as seen here and here but neither of these examples bare any resemblance to what we see in the topic image we have.

Yes there are dark patches, but where are all the rocks and boulders, mountains, valleys, cliffs... very hard pressed to find any further objects that even remotely look like the curved object we are seeing. So we're still stuck with the question... what is it?

[edit on 8-7-2009 by Extralien]

reply to post by Extralien


I would think that IF that 'rock' which is 170 miles wide, from just the surface of the rock, who know how deep it really does go?

Wouldn't there be a MASSIVE crater even bigger than what we see here ??

reply to post by Komodo


The 'rock' is not 170 miles wide.. the full photo is.. and not the cropped area I posted in the OP. Visit the link above your post to see the full sized image.

And yes, it should have made some form of a crater, if it is a crashed object. but it would depend on when and how it crashed. It might have crashed millions of years ago into a softer surface (just an idea) but it might be an outcrop of some kind..

It's hard to tell.. it is very unusual though.

Originally posted by Extralien
reply to post by Komodo

 

The 'rock' is not 170 miles wide.. the full photo is.. and not the cropped area I posted in the OP. Visit the link above your post to see the full sized image.

And yes, it should have made some form of a crater, if it is a crashed object. but it would depend on when and how it crashed. It might have crashed millions of years ago into a softer surface (just an idea) but it might be an outcrop of some kind..

It's hard to tell.. it is very unusual though.

oh! I must have misinterpreted the 170. Even still, that object is still pretty freaking huge for the pic..

Eheheh!
This is a great find
As we can see, the caption itself is saying (using the very complex language of scientists whenever they have no idea what they are looking at) that they have no clue what is it: just some clues are provided (the object is not in shadow, hence its dark appearance is his own). They have been observing something dark before, but so what? What is what we see in THIS specific image? Just say in the caption that you DON'T know it. What is it? This is the question, the UNANSWERED one
This is the most interesting image i've been seeing since long time. A very good find, a really anomalous image, a rare gem: no matter if it will turn out to be something different from a crash caused by the intervention of some extraterrestrial life form: this is something that needs to be explained. Kudos to the OP.


[edit on 8/7/2009 by internos]

There's one more fly-by by Messenger in September 2009. It'll be interesting if it manages to capture another image of the impactor/ dark material from a different angle or in different light conditions. What would be even more useful would be if Messenger Catalog adds location details. I've been trying to find the area on the older Mariner 10 images and fairly given up...for now.

August 3, 2004 -- MESSENGER Launch
August 2005 -- Earth flyby
October 2006 --
Venus flyby June 2007 --
Venus flyby January 2008 --
Mercury flyby October 2008 --
Mercury flyby September 2009 --
Mercury flyby March 2011 -- Yearlong science orbit of Mercury begins