The ESA/JAXA BepiColombo spacecraft captured stunning images of Mercury during its close flyby on June 19, 2023. The monitoring camera M-CAM 3 captured 217 images of the planet’s illuminated side, showcasing its geological features. The image sequence starts at 19:46:25 UTC on June 19, 2023, and ends at 20:34:25 UTC on June 20, 2023. The second part of the movie features a flyover of a special region of interest, including the Beagle Rupes and Manley Crater. The scene has been reconstructed using the ‘shape from shading’ technique, which infers surface slope from the brightness of the images. The flyover view is based on a coarser digital elevation model from NASA’s Messenger and the BepiColombo image. The University of Sheffield’s Machine Intelligence for Musical Audio group composed music for the sequence using an Artificial Musical Intelligence (AMI) tool. A bonus 3D scene of the region covered by the flyover sequence has also been reconstructed using the ‘shape from shading’ technique.
