The Two Moons Of Mars As Seen From Mars

MARSDAILY

Spirit, Sol 585. August 26, 2005. Time lapse from irregular time intervals. See larger image. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/Texas A&M.

Pasadena CA (SPX) Sep 16, 2005
Taking advantage of extra solar energy collected during the day, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit settled in for an evening of stargazing, photographing the two moons of Mars as they crossed the night sky.

"It is incredibly cool to be running an observatory on another planet," said planetary scientist Jim Bell of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., lead scientist for the panoramic cameras on Spirit and Opportunity.

This time-lapse composite, acquired the evening of Spirit's martian sol 585 (Aug. 26, 2005) from a perch atop "Husband Hill" in Gusev Crater, shows Phobos, the brighter moon, on the right, and Deimos, the dimmer moon, on the left. Tiny streaks mark the trails of background stars moving across the sky or the impact of cosmic rays lighting up random groups of pixels in the image.

Scientists will use images of the two moons to better map their orbital positions, learn more about their composition, and monitor the presence of nighttime clouds or haze. Spirit took the five images that make up this composite using the panoramic camera's broadband filter, which was designed specifically for acquiring images under low-light conditions.

The Night Sky On Mars

Pasadena CA (JPL) Sep 16, 2005 Taking advantage of extra solar energy collected during the day, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit settled in for an evening of stargazing, photographing the two moons of Mars as they crossed the night sky. This time-lapse composite, acquired the evening of Spirit's martian sol 590 (Aug. 30, 2005) from a perch atop "Husband Hill" in Gusev Crater, shows Phobos, the brighter moon, on the left, and Deimos, the dimmer moon, on the right.

Spirit, Sol 590. August 30, 2005. Time lapse from 170 sec. time intervals. See larger image. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/Texas A&M.
In this sequence of images obtained every 170 seconds, both moons move from top to bottom. The bright star Aldebaran forms a trail on the right, along with some other stars in the constellation Taurus. Most of the other streaks in the image mark the collision of cosmic rays with pixels in the camera.

Scientists will use images of the two moons to better map their orbital positions, learn more about their composition, and monitor the presence of nighttime clouds or haze.

Spirit took the six images that make up this composite using Spirit's panoramic camera with the camera's broadband filter, which was designed specifically for acquiring images under low-light conditions.

MARSDAILY

A Tale Of Two Rovers

Gerroa, Australia (SPX) Sep 07, 2005
Six hundred sols later, Spirit is still alive and - three weeks behind it - so is Opportunity. At less than a million dollars a day, these two rovers are among NASA's most successful missions since Apollo. And now you can read how they did it in a newly released book by the mission's PI Steve Squyres.

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