New Nasa Photos Show Off Mercury In Brilliant 3D Map (VIDEO)

New Nasa Photos Show Off Mercury In Brilliant 3D Map

Brand new pictures taken by Nasa have shown off the planet Mercury in never-before-seen glamour.

For the first time, Nasa have been able to create a three-dimensional map of the surface of the planet, the nearest to the sun.

Using thousands of photographs taken by the Messenger satellite over its first year orbiting the planet, Nasa have been able to knit together a full picture of the Mercury's surface.

The brilliant colours of the map represent different rock compositions, which explains why we still see Mercury as a cloudy brown colour, rather than the sharp blues and golds on the map.

The map was revealed at Boston's American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting, according to the BBC.

Johns Hopkins University's Dr David Blewett explained to BBC News that:

"The areas that you see that are orange - those are volcanic plains. There are some areas that are deep blue that are richer in an opaque mineral which is somewhat mysterious - we don't really know what that is yet.

"And then you see beautiful light-blue streaks across Mercury's surface. Those are crater rays formed in impacts when fresh, ground-up rock is strewn across the surface of the planet."

This week, Nasa also captured a rare video of a pulsar jet star in deep space, which looked too much like a looming, sinister space ship for our liking. Combined with Friday's Russian meteorite shower, which reportedly injured some 400 people, it's been a mixed week for Earth-Space relations.