page_title: Raditladi Basin
section_title: Geology
hierarchical_section_title: Raditladi Basin / Geology
caption_attribution_description: English: The International Astronomical Union (IAU) recently approved new names for features on Mercury that were all seen for the first time in images taken by MESSENGER during the spacecraft’s first flyby of the planet. Read the full press release for additional details about the naming process and the origin of the names, and visit the U.S. Geological Survey website, the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature, to learn about all of the named planetary features in the Solar System. This image, produced by mosaicking many Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) images together, shows the locations of the newly named features, along with the craters Basho, Mozart, and Tolstoj, first seen by the Mariner 10 mission. Close-up views of many of these features are available in the MESSENGER website image gallery. In particular, look at these previous releases for NAC high-resolution images of Apollodorus, Beagle Rupes, Eminescu, Mozart, Neruda, Pantheon Fossae, Raditladi, and Sander.
context_page_description: Raditladi Basin is a large peak ring impact crater on Mercury with a diameter of 263 km. Inside its peak ring there is a system of concentric extensional troughs, which are rare surface features on Mercury. The floor of Raditladi is partially covered by relatively light smooth plains, which are thought to be a product of the effusive volcanism. The troughs may also have resulted from volcanic processes under the floor of Raditladi. The basin is relatively young—probably younger than one billion years, with only a few small impact craters on its floor and with well-preserved basin walls and peak-ring structure.
context_section_description: The central part of Raditladi is occupied by a large peak ring with a diameter of 125 km. The ring is slightly offset from the geometrical center of the basin in the north-west direction. The floor of Raditladi is covered by two types of terrain: light smooths plains and dark hummocky plains. The former partially embay the hummocky plains and are probably volcanic in origin. The latter are present mainly on a part of the floor between the peak ring and crater rim; they interpreted to be the original crater floor material not covered by the light colored lavas of smooth plains. The hummocky plains are slightly bluer than smooth plains. The areas outside Raditladi are covered by the dark relatively blue impact ejecta. The peak ring massifs at some places expose a bright blue material identical to one on the floors of some bright Mercurian impact craters (Bright Crater Floor Deposits—BCFD). BCFD in Raditladi are recognized more generally as a subset of a landform now called hollows.
caption: Position of Raditladi on Mercury
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