Mickey Mouse on Mercury – a nice pareidolia

The image below is probably familiar to everyone. This particular Mickey Mouse impression, however, has been caught on planet Mercury by NASA’s Messenger spacecraft.

This particular crater configuration is in Mercury’s south, near a crater named Magritte. “The shadowing helps define the striking ‘Mickey Mouse’ resemblance, created by the accumulation of craters over Mercury’s long geologic history,” says NASA in the photo description on Flickr.

Messenger is the first spacecraft to orbit the planet Mercury. During its one-year primary mission, Messenger acquired 88,746 images and other data sets. The spacecraft is currently in a yearlong extended mission, with plans to acquire more than 80,000 additional images of Mercury.

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