Phobos & Deimos together
Posted: Sat Dec 12, 2009 10:52 pm
-------------------------------------------------http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00002250/ wrote:
Awesome Mars Express view of Phobos and Deimos together
By Emily Lakdawalla | Dec. 11, 2009
<<On [Guy Fawkes Day] November 5, 2009 at 08:14 UTC, the moons of Mars happened to be aligned just right as Mars Express crossed Mars' equator on its polar orbit for the orbiter to capture images of Phobos and Deimos together in the sky. It shows Phobos and Deimos together, with Phobos crossing Deimos, in what's known as a "mutual event." It's the first animation of its kind ever produced by a Mars orbiter -- and there have been a lot of Mars orbiters! Credit: FU Berlin
Geometry of the Mars Express Phobos and Deimos mutual event:
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phobos_(mythology) wrote:
<<Phobos (Φόβος, "Fear") is the embodiment of fear and horror in Greek mythology. He is the offspring of Ares and Aphrodite. He was known for accompanying Ares into battle along with his brother, Deimos (Δεῖμος, "dread"), the goddess Enyo, and his father’s attendants.
Those who worshiped Phobos often made bloody sacrifices in his name. In Seven Against Thebes by Aeschylus, the seven warriors slaughter a bull over a black shield and then “touching the bull’s gore with their hands they swore an oath by … Phobos who delights in blood…”(Atsma). Ares’s son, Kyknos, “beheaded strangers who came along in order to build a temple to Phobos (fear) from the skulls” (Atsma).
Warriors and heroes who worshiped Phobos, such as Heracles and Agamemnon, carried shields with depictions of Phobos on them. Hesiod depicts Phobos on the shield of Heracles as “…staring backwards with eyes that glowed with fire. His mouth was full of teeth in a white row, fearful and daunting….” Phobos is often depicted as having a lion’s or lion-like head. This can be seen in Description of Greece by Pausanias, “On the shield of Agamemnon is Phobos (Fear), who head is a lion’s…”
According to Plutarch, Alexander the Great offered sacrifices to Phobos on the eve of the Battle of Gaugamela. This was believed by Mary Renault to be part of Alexander’s psychological warfare campaign against Darius III. Darius fled from the field of Gaugamela, which makes Alexander’s praying to Phobos (in all probability asking him to fill Darius with fear) seem successful as a tactic.>>