English: High-resolution view of hollows within Praxiteles crater on Mercury, from MESSENGER Narrow Angle Camera.

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The discovery of hollows on Mercury remains one of the most surprising scientific findings by MESSENGER. Hollows are sharp-edged, irregular, rimless pits that are often surrounded by bright haloes (Blewett, D. T. et al., 2013) and form primarily in terrains exhibiting reflectance values lower than that of the global average [e.g., 2–5]. Hollows are interpreted to represent volatile-loss landforms on the basis of geomorphic and remotely sensed geochemical observations [e.g., 1,2,4,6–10].

Observations of topography, specifically the relationships of hollows to their surroundings, can be used to investigate hollow formation. Provided here is a set of digital terrain models (DTMs) that were constructed to examine the topographic settings of landforms around Mercury's hollows.