Mercury
North is up in these images
2008 images
An animation of 7 images taken from October 15th to November 2nd, showing Mercury's rotational motion and phase change as it approaches and then passes greatest western elongation. Until very recently the surface features seen here were poorly known and only recently recorded in high resolution by the Messenger spacecraft during it's first two flybys in 2008. A third flyby will occur in 2009, and then Messenger will finally go into orbit around Mercury in 2011. Mercury orbits the Sun in only 88 Earth days, but it rotates very slowly---it's own day is just over 58.6 Earth days.
A comparison between my January 16, 2008 image and one taken by the Messenger spacecraft about 47 hours before.
At left: An image taken with my Celestron 11 on 1-16-2008 at 19:24UT. Mercury was 6.1" in diameter and the central meridian (CM) was 237°. At right: Messenger recorded this image on 1-14-08 at approximately 20:25UT, about 80 minutes after the point of closest approach during its first Mercury flyby.
Besides being taken almost two days apart, the view perspective from the Earth's position in space on the 16th and the position of Messenger when its image was taken on the 14th is roughly the same, and so the planet appears to show only a slightly different phase and nearly the same CM. However, Messenger was also somewhat above the Earth's orbital plane (and Mercury's) at the time of its image, as more of Mercury's north polar region is visible as the spacecraft was 'looking down' a bit at Mercury as compared to my Earth-based perspective.
Of course the above Messenger image has resolution that's many orders of magnitude greater than my comparatively crude backyard result. This comparison's purpose is mainly to show that the features I've imaged are real.
Click here to link to the higher resolution version on the Messenger website. The main website for the Messenger mission is here: http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/index.php
2007 images
An animation of 5 images taken from November 4th to the 17th, showing Mercury's rotational motion and phase change as it approaches and then passes greatest western elongation. Except for a narrow area at the sun-facing limb of the planet in the last two frames, this is the side of Mercury that wasn't imaged by Mariner 10, and so most of these features were not well mapped at the time of that this image sequence was taken. This has changed as the Messenger spacecraft has completed two of three flybys of Mercury in 2008 and will eventually go into orbit around the planet in 2011. Mercury orbits the Sun in only 88 Earth days, but it rotates very slowly---it's own day is just over 58.6 Earth days.