MSL - Astronomical Observations, Phobos/Deimos, planetary/celestial observations and more Options

[iMPREPREX]

Very nice. You've inspired me to take a crack at it (I'm more focusing on the detail on the bright side).

Full size: http://www.flickr.com/photos/84750994@N05/...254849/sizes/o/

Blown up 400%.

[Gerald]

... I'm more focusing on the detail on the bright side ...

Astonishing results!
I couldn't get much beyond this for the bright side (Sol 351 MR, 17 images):


... Beautiful panos, Damia!

[Zelenyikot]

Phobos and Deimos dance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7abQLDeD0xM

[Gerald]

Sol 363 Phobos transit with available 96x96 thumbnails rather subtle yet, despite 2x magnifying and sharpening:

Hoping for full version, soon.

[Gerald]

The Sol 351 Phobos/Deimos sequence is almost complete now:

Images are roughly registered to Phobos and sharpened.

[Phil Stooke]

Revisiting the Phobos images:

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/?ImageID=5511

This is a very nice comparison of the apparent sizes of Phobos, Deimos and our Moon seen from their respective planets... but check the caption:

"The size-comparison image of Earth's moon, on the right, is also oriented with north up."

Sorry, JPL buddies, but not so - this looks like a distant Galileo encounter 2 image, and the north pole is at right, pretty much at the middle of the terminator - it's almost looking down on the pole.

Phil

[wildespace]

Interesting, the image shows that Phobos is approx as wide as the Moon in the widest part, and half as wide in the short part. Stellarium shows a much smaller Phobos as seen from Mars, 0.125 degrees or approx 1/4th of the Moon diameter, but perhaps Stellarium is not the most precise software in that regard. What is Phobos' angular size as shown in Celestia?

P.S. I plugged the numbers from the JPL link into an online calculator at http://www.1728.org/angsize.htm and the result is 0.2 degrees, slightly less than half the full moon.

[fredk]

Phobos orbits so low that its angular size varies substantially depending on how far above the horizon it is - from something like 0.14 degree at the horizon to 0.2 degree at zenith. (I'm not sure if that corresponds to an average diameter or what.)

The press image doesn't show the long axis of Phobos as wide as the moon (0.5 degrees). Look at the Marsshine images and you'll see that most (about 2/3 or 3/4) of the length of Phobos is in sunlight in this image. So it shows the long axis at roughly 0.3 degrees wide.

[Deimos]

I wonder how this happened?

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/?ImageID=5511

Thanks to Phil Stooke, wildespace, fredk (and Doug E). Note that the image of Phobos and Deimos that is used is enlarged to 2x MCAM-100 resolution. That has a 5 deg field of view spanned by 1200 pixels. The roughly N-S axis of Phobos is, in fact, nearly 0.2 deg in the image.

[djellison]

this looks like a distant Galileo encounter 2 image,

Ahh - just saw Marc's post

Yeah - whacked out a little render of the moon to fit the job

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/multimedia/dis...amp;IM_ID=17749


Doug

[stevesliva]

Sorry, JPL buddies, but not so - this looks like a distant Galileo encounter 2 image, and the north pole is at right, pretty much at the middle of the terminator - it's almost looking down on the pole.

[Moon] Atlas did not shrug.

[Gerald]

The first reasonably resolved Sol 363 Phobos transit (eclipse) images are available, e.g. this and this MR image.
Enhanced regions (blur with radius 0.3, brightness stretched):

[fredk]

We caught what appears to be a serious wind gust on sol 368. Notice how the near foreground darkens in the first frame, then the distant slope darkens, before everything brightens up again. That suggests a huge dusty gust blowing roughly north to south. It has to be huge to darken such a large region. This is half-resolution, to fit all frames into 1MB:

[fredk]

Full resolution view of the big gust, cropped and including only the first four frames to fit (there is very little change after the fourth frame):

[Gerald]

Full resolution view of the big gust, cropped and including only the first four frames to fit (there is very little change after the fourth frame):

If you are right, this may be the first successful triggering of a Hazcam sequence by a REMS event.
Great observation! Like Ed, I first assigned it to some unusual exposure fluctuation, but I think you've got it.
It may look large, as it probably moved straight over MSL.