They're atmospheric observations, either pointed at the Sun or for figuring out dust in the atmosphere, but I don't know specifics about what they're for or what exactly they're supposed to be looking at when they're not Sun-pointed. Clearly the auto-stretch algorithm is doing bad things to these images. You can tell from the pointing information on the annoying flash popup caption that they're not pointed at moons -- as you say the moons are equatorial and very low altitude so to point at them Phoenix would essentially have to point at the horizon (elevation ~0), and these have much higher elevations, in the 30s and 40s.

--Emily

Got it; thanks!

Yeah, I'm not wild about that pop-up caption feature either; would rather have stable text al a the Cassini site.

http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images/gallery/lg_2267.jpg

*tsk tsk* Phoenix sure is messy. Now it is dropping dirt on the DVD.

Oh, well spotted, VP! Hope we get that in color soon.

I think the whole deck is going to be very dirty by the end of this mission!

--Emily

So, not only are our names on Mars, but now Mars is on our names...

Don't forget

Is it me or are the images from sol 8 (possibly other sols as well) on Phoenix UoA site duplicated?

One might see the dirt on the DVD as a good thing. Protecting it from UV rays would potentially prolong its life. It may actually work if they still have DVD players around in 2020.

Anyway, does anyone happen to have the link to the page where the guy renames the images from the Phoenix website to their product IDs, and zips them up? I'm going to make my own script but I want to catch up. edit: got it, thanks for the PM!

ugorden, and yes, ever since Sol 7 (when the website got hacked) they have been duplicated for some reason (you can do an md5 on similar looking images in sequential order and they're identical). I'm sure they'll work out the reasons for that in due time.

There has been quite a bit of duplication from the word go as far as I've been able to make out.

Didn't get the chance to get, process and upload the sol 8 images this morning so I don't know if the duplication is any worse tosol.

My thoughts on this sudden celebrity status for Phoenix, if anyone has a few minutes to kill...

Hehe That is a great image Stu

Haha, Stu, viewing the thumbnail I thought those were spider monsters from Resistance: Rise of Man (it's a videogame). I know, I'm a geek. But that was cute.

Echoing Josh's post, at first glance the thumbnail looked to me like Phoenix was on stage as lead performer in a heavy metal rock band. Bizzarre, I know.

Phöenïx -- the first Martian double-umlaut band.

On sol 5 we had several SSI images apparently showing clouds, eg:
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images/gallery/lg_1241.jpg

In this image I can imagine that I see a halo:
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images/gallery/lg_1318.jpg
Here I've sketched a segment of a circle to "guide the eye":

Can anyone figure out the sun's alt/az at the time that frame was taken? Obviously it should correspond to roughly the centre of the circle I've sketched if this really is a halo.

If I read this right, the image is full frame downsampled, so is almost 14 degrees across, and so the circle I've sketched has a radius of very roughly half of that. Any ideas what angular diameters to expect for Martian halos?

Could someone point me to a good version of the 360 degree pan, (i.e. with the horizon matched up and the darker frames matched a little better than the first jpl version) I have a large format printer ( 60 inch by 100 feet!) at work and would like to print one.

Thanks in advance.