Kandinsky Crater is located near Mercury's north pole and shows evidence for hosting water ice. The floor of Kandinsky is in permanent shadow and never receives direct sunlight, keeping it very cold. However, by using sunlight scattered off the crater's walls and the WAC broadband clear filter, MESSENGER's MDIS instrument was able to capture this image that reveals the details of the shadowed surface. The WAC broadband image is shown on the left, outlined in yellow and overlain on an MDIS polar mosaic. The view on the right shows the same image but with the brightness and contrast stretched to show the details of the crater's shadowed floor.
NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington