Surveyor Snaps A Phobos Exclusive

MARSDAILY

This high resolution image of Phobos was taken at a distance of apx 9,670 kilometers (6,010 miles). At this distance, the image resolution is about 36 meters (470 ft.) per pixel; the maximum dimension of Phobos as seen in this image (the diagonal from lower left to upper right) is just over 24 km (15 mi). This is the "trailing" hemisphere, the part of Phobos that faces opposite the direction that the moon orbits Mars. This is a part of Phobos that was not seen by MOC in 1998, when MGS made several close flybys of the tiny moon.

Pasadena - Jun 25, 2003
Images from the Mars Orbiter Camera aboard NASA's Mars Global Surveyor capture a faint yet distinct glimpse of the elusive Phobos, the larger and innermost of Mars' two moons. The moon, which usually rises in the west and moves rapidly across the sky to set in the east twice a day, is shown setting over Mars' afternoon horizon.

Phobos is so close to the martian surface (less than 6,000 kilometers or 3,728 miles away), it only appears above the horizon at any instant from less than a third of the planet's surface. From the areas where it is visible, Phobos looks only half as large as Earth's full moon.

Like our own satellite, it always keeps the same side facing Mars. The tiny moon is also one of the darkest and mostly colorless (dark grey) objects in the solar system, so for the color image two exposures were needed to see it next to Mars. The faint orange-red hue seen in the wide-angle image is a combination of the light coming from Mars and the way the camera processes the image.

The bottom picture is a high-resolution image that shows Phobos' "trailing" hemisphere (the part facing opposite the direction of its orbit). At a range of 9,670 kilometers (6,009 miles), this image has a resolution of 35.9 meters (117.8 feet) per pixel. The image width (diagonal from lower left to upper right) is just over 24 kilometers (15 miles).

MARSDAILY

Prolific NASA Orbiter Adds Thousands Of Photos To Mars Album

Pasadena - Apr 08, 2003
The winds of Mars leave their marks on many of the 11,664 new pictures being posted on the Internet today by the camera team for NASA's Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) mission.

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