Since we have a thread about pictures taken by the Cassini mission to Saturn, I thought it might be a nice idea to start another one for the best pics sent by the Mars probes and rovers. Here's one of my favorites so far, the Martian Sunset:



Post away.

A pale blue dot picture:

A picture from ESA's Mars Express: Coprates Chasma and Catena on the Horizon.

And another: Polar ice.

jummy, NICE picture!

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

Phobos is my favourite moon. I have been searching for an image of Iapetus.The raised equator and crater.

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Round...everything is always round!

...And an even closer look at Phobos, courtesy of Mars Global Surveyor.

Image

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"All your bias are belong to us." Ara Pacis
"A witty saying proves nothing." Voltaire

Animation: Phobos and Deimos running across the Martian night sky.

The above image of Phobos is gorgeous, but a bit excessive to be hotlinked at nearly 400kb (for forum members at the mercy of dial-up).
I took the liberty of converting it to a URL.

Animation: Clouds over the North Pole of Mars

The animation of Phobos and Deimos seems to show the moons going in the same direction. Was it just a piece of "bad astronomy" that said Phobos is so close that it appears to go the other way?

The moons both move in the sky in the same direction (west to east), as does our own Moon. However, in the case of Deimos and our Moon, the planet's eastward rotation "overrides" their eastward mostion, making them appear to rise in the east and set in the west, like the Sun. Since Phobos orbits more quickly than the planet rotates, its eastward motion is dominant, making it rise in the west and set in the east.

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"Call me old-fashioned, but I think fire is magic. And it scares me a lot."

--The State

But doesn't that conflict with what the animation shows?

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"All your bias are belong to us." Ara Pacis
"A witty saying proves nothing." Voltaire

How much did the background stars actually appear to move from Spirit's stanpoint over the many minutes of imaging?

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The background stars don't seem to move at all, except for one, which, oddly, blinks in and out of existence.

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"All your bias are belong to us." Ara Pacis
"A witty saying proves nothing." Voltaire

But, of course, they would, and either Spirit moved its camera to follow them or the animation frames were aligned to keep the stars appearing stationery (stills at: Spirit :: Pancam :: Sol 585). It appears to have been shot over the course of 10 minutes.

I wouldn't make any conclusions about what way the moons appeared to a ground observer until I accounted for the implicit movement of the framing of the animation.

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Gaspra, Deimos and Phobos
Endurance Crater
Looking back!

Launch Window posted this in another thread: Scientists relish Mars' images

A river delta?
'What a desolate place this is.'