This MER_Vent_Locations_Classifications_readme.txt file was generated on 2021-04-02 by David L Pegg GENERAL INFORMATION 1. Title of Dataset: MER_Vent_Locations_Classifications 2. Author Information A. Principal Investigator Contact Information Name: David L. Pegg Institution: The Open University Email: David.L.Pegg@Open.ac.uk B. Co-investigator Contact Information Name: David A. Rothery Institution: The Open University Email: David.Rothery@open.ac.uk D. Co-investigator Contact Information Name: Matt R. Balme Institution: The Open University D. Co-investigator Contact Information Name: Susan J. Conway Institution: CNRS 3. Date of data collection 2018-2019 4. Geographic location of data collection This contains a classification of volcanic vents from all over the planet Mercury 5. Information about funding sources that supported the collection of the data: David Pegg was funded by the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) under grant ST/R504993/1, and the Open University’s Space Research Area. DAR and MJB receive support from European Commission Grant 776276 (Planmap) for Mercury mapping. SJC is grateful for financial support from the French Space Agency CNES for her BepiColombo work. The authors declare no conflicts of interest SHARING/ACCESS INFORMATION 1. Licenses/restrictions placed on the data: CC BY 4.0 2. Links to publications that cite or use the data: This is linked to a paper “Explosive Vent Sites on Mercury: Commonplace Multiple Eruptions and their Implications” submitted to Icarus. 3. Links to other publicly accessible locations of the data: 4. Links/relationships to ancillary data sets: 5. Was data derived from another source? yes The locations of volcanic vent sites on Mercury examined were taken from existing lists of vents and faculae (Kerber et al., 2011; Goudge et al., 2014; Thomas et al., 2014a; Jozwiak et al., 2018). We added 27 further vent sites that we identified during our own study of Mercury, and re-examined areas previously identified as “pitted ground” (Thomas et al., 2014c) to see if subsequent images would reveal volcanic vents not identified in previous data. DATA & FILE OVERVIEW 1. File List: MER_Vent_Locations_Classifications.csv METHODOLOGICAL INFORMATION 1. Description of methods used for collection/generation of data: We examined images from MESSENGER spacecraft and used them study the locations and assign classification of compound or non compound based on the volcanic vents morphology. See associated paper for full details. 2. Instrument- or software-specific information needed to interpret the data: Images were captured by NASA’s MESSENGER MDIS 3. People involved with sample collection, processing, analysis and/or submission: David L. Pegg DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION : 1. Number of cases/rows: 309/7 2. Variable List: Vent ID: A unique number for each volcanic vent site Lat: The Latitude of the vent site in decimal degrees Long: The Longitude of the vent site in decimal degrees Compound: The classification of vent if compound or not: Yes – The vent is compound No – The vent is not compound Tentative – The vent has features that suggests it may be compound but they are not resolved sufficiently to confirm Unclassifiable – the available image data is insufficient to identify internal features of the vent or confirm if it is a vent or not Image Quality: A classification of the amount of image data available for each vent site Reasonable – sufficient to classify the vent, by may require multiple images Good – clear image data to identify features within a vent site. Poor – poor illumination or resolution making it difficult to study the interior of the vent site Facula: is the vent associated with a facula (positive albedo feature) yes – there is a facula No – there is no facula In Crater: is the vent site in an impact crater Yes – it is inside an impact crater No – it is not inside an impact crater