Two Moons Passing in the Night (Inverted Black and White)

Taking advantage of extra solar energy collected during the day, NASA's Spirit rover 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, lead scientist for the panoramic cameras (Pancam) at Cornell University. In this inverted black-and-white animation, both martian moons, Deimos on the left and Phobos on the right, travel across the night sky in front of the constellation Sagittarius. Sagittarius resembles an upside-down teapot. Phobos is the darker object on the right; Deimos is on the left.

Spirit acquired these enhanced-brightness images with the Pancam on the night of sol 585 (Aug. 26, 2005). 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 animation with the Pancam broadband filter, which was designed specifically for acquiring images under low-light conditions.

Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/Texas A&M

phobos_deimos_585inv_ld.txt


Alt tag

This animation shows Phobos as a large black dot against a white background, representing Phobos, moving from the lower center toward the upward right corner. Above and to the left of it is Deimos, a smaller black dot, representing Deimos, that also moves upward and to the right but at a much slower pace. In fact, Phobos starts out below Deimos and quickly moves past it in the sequence.