Curiosity photographs the two moons of Mars

[MargaritaMc]

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?r ... e_2013-253

JPL
August 15, 2013

PASADENA, Calif. -- The larger of the two moons of Mars, Phobos, passes directly in front of the other, Deimos, in a new series of sky-watching images from NASA's Mars rover Curiosity.

A video clip assembled from the images is at http://youtu.be/DaVSCmuOJwI

Large craters on Phobos are clearly visible in these images from the surface of Mars. No previous images from missions on the surface caught one moon eclipsing the other.

The telephoto-lens camera of Curiosity's two-camera Mast Camera (Mastcam) instrument recorded the images on Aug. 1. Some of the full-resolution frames were not downlinked until more than a week later, in the data-transmission queue behind higher-priority images being used for planning the rover's drives.

These observations of Phobos and Deimos help researchers make knowledge of the moons' orbits even more precise[...].

[saturno2]

The Moons of Mars very different that the Moon of the Earth

[neufer]

[b][color=#0000FF] This movie clip shows Phobos passing in front of the other Martian moon, Deimos, on August 1 2013, from the perspective of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity. The clip includes interpolated frames smoothing out the motion between frames from Curiosity's Mast Camera (Mastcam) with images 1.4 seconds apart. With the interpolated frames, this clip: 10 frames per second matching the actual time elapsed. Emily Lakdawalla / NASA / JPL-Caltech / Malin Space Science Systems / Texas A&M University[/color][/b]

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[b][color=#0000FF]Deimos as seen from the MSL, 08:42 UTC Aug. 1, 2013[/color][/b]

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[b][color=#0000FF]Phobos as seen from Deimos, 08:42 UTC Aug. 1, 2013[/color][/b]

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