Using its Mast camera, the Curiosity rover observes the Martian moon Phobos eclipse the other moon Deimos: NASA Rover Gets Movie as a Mars Moon Passes Another – NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
2 thoughts on “Curiosity films Phobos moon passing in front of Deimos”
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didnt realize the mast cam had this kind of telescope vision !
It has a telephoto lens so it can zoom a bit but not sure I’d call it a telescope. The images can be blown up to as well to look closer at the moons.
Phobos looks from the surface of Mars almost as big as the Moon looks to our eyes here. Deimos is much smaller but is still very bright. So a person standing on Mars beside Curiosity could have seen Phobos eclipse Deimos without any visual aid.
The Mast-Cam (actually 2 cameras for stereo) seems to have a very wide range of movement and can capture these night sky images more easily than previous rover cameras.