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Mars Curiosity Rover Shoots Video of Phobos Moon Rising
An anonymous reader writes "This movie clip shows Phobos, the larger of the two moons of Mars, passing overhead, as observed by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity in a series of images centered straight overhead starting shortly after sunset. Phobos first appears near the lower center of the view and moves toward the top of the view. The clip runs at accelerated speed; the amount of time covered in it is about 27 minutes"
Either your expectations are too high, or your sense of wonder is too low, to get much out of this. Personally, I loved it.
Either your expectations are too high, or your sense of wonder is too low, to get much out of this. Personally, I loved it.
Sigh... Louis C.K. was correct, "Everything is amazing and nobody is happy": http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8m5d0_everything-is-amazing-and-nobody-i_fun
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
Why don't you post *your* video of Phobos to show NASA how it should be done?
It seems that this rising happened during the 'day'. Sometimes our moon does that but just before I watched this video I expected it to be 'night'. ;-)
Anyway, nice one!
Probably Mars wont experience a lot of tidal forces from such a tiny rock
rm -rf --no-preserve-root /
I think the problem is that unless you're very familiar with Mars and its satellites it's a little bit of a let down to see a group of pixels move across the screen, rather than the stunning moon rise we see regularly here on earth. I know I was.
It's not that I have lost any sense of wonderment, it's just that my lack of knowledge allowed me to build up a mental image of a visibly cratered moon rising over a dusty red planet's horizon. Then I searched for photos of Phobos and realised that that was pretty dumb.
Compare this to my awe at watching the transit of Venus (online, it was too cloudy where I was in the UK to see the exit), and all I was watching was a black circle move in front of the sun, but that was how I expected it to be.
To be fair, it is a little disappointing. I mean, I could have taken a much better video than this. Except for the whole "having to take the video from fucking Mars" part.
It's not rising, it's already overhead.
For more immediate visual gratification appreciated by a wider audience, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter provides wonderfully detailed images of Phobos.
That was the instrument that caught this mind-numbing image of the Phoenix lander as it was descending on its parachute. Words are really quite superfluous.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
It's only a model.
As often, spectacularly disappointed by Curiosity.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Obligatory Star Wars reference.
Nice fallacy.
I think the problem is that unless you're very familiar with Mars and its satellites it's a little bit of a let down to see a group of pixels move across the screen, rather than the stunning moon rise we see regularly here on earth. I know I was.
Nope. If you stop and think about it for even 1 second you get this:
It's a moonrise ON ANOTHER PLANET!
ANOTHER PLANET!!!!
A MOONRISE ON ANOTHER PLANET!!!!
Basically if those words alone aren't enough then you have no soul. And I don't even believe in the existence of souls.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Yeah, the difference in size makes quite a difference, so if you only intend to watch moonrises on one planets, Mars may not be your best choice. Then again, Mars has two moons, so that could present some very interesting visuals. It's also important to note that this camera had to be able to survive in space, was constrained by other limitations of the flight, and wasn't under direct human operation. If we could get manned missions to Mars and could bypass many of the current concerns, we could get much more compelling footage.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
In an astronomical scale Mars is hardly 'distant'
My video:
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I suffer from PhobosPhobia you insensitive clod!
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Nothing short of sighting God himself would impress me at 2 pixels wide. I just can't get into the "that's mindblowing" frame of mind at that resolution. And we've been able to take pictures from space for a long time now.
In an astronomical scale Mars is hardly 'distant'
Hardly relevant. The point is, that in a "mobile ground based remotely-controlled-by-humans camera" scale, it most definitely IS distant.
I'm not sure what is more annoying - dismissing the video because it doesn't look impressive enough, or dismissing it because it's not much of an achievement anyway. All I know is, anyone not impressed / moved by this does not understand it.
lower center of the move? The Sun? (This was supposed to be just after sunset.)
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
We have been to Mars a number of times now. It is time to land on Europa
General Life Protip: People who generally describe everything in absolutes and black-and-white scenarios, are usually very very likely to be morons too dumb to see that it's not that simple. This does not exclude this Protip.
Also, I think if you're still fascinated by boring gray rocks that all look alike, you haven't seen *shit*. Any stone pit is more "fascinating" than that. You've seen one gray rock you've seen 'em all. And to any being with a healthy brain everything that's not new anymore, and also not a basic instinct, automatically becomes boring. Only people with no memory are fascinated by the same lame thing over and over again.
Maybe you should go out more often. There are *vastly* more amazing things out there. Go the other path; say hello to that unknown girl there; buy something else than plain vanilla ice cream; fap with the other hand... you know... explore reality for a change.
Suddenly "yet another gray rock in space" will become veery boooring. Especially if you have seen a thousand of them.
You're not too far off the mark. Phobos and Deimos were named after fear and dread, respectively.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
And if you want to reenact that for yourself, get a copy of Kerbal Space Program and get launching.
I had to manually scrape the html to find a link to the actual video.
They claim to support IE, Chrome, Firefox, and Opera, but somehow I think what they really mean is that they only support Mac and Windows.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I agree with you that a mission to Europa is DEVOUTLY to be desired - let us hope that Europa Clipper goes ahead! However, that surely doesn't make film of an extraterrestrial moonrise any less awe inspiring - and for what it is, not how it appears.
Really... we have to explain this to the slashdot crowd?
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
It should really fill you with a sense of wonder when you think about the Earth's Moon, realizing that it is really a dwarf planet all to itself and in fact one of the largest "natural satellites" in the Solar System... on the same general size as the Galilean moons of Jupiter or even Titan and Triton. Phobos and Deimos really are not much more than captured asteroids. Indeed I think the Moon should be considered as a planet... as much as Pluto, Vesta, and Ceres currently are considered as such by the IAU (the "dwarf" status still makes them planets). As such, when you see the Moon rising in the night sky here on the Earth, you really are looking at another planet that happens to be quite close to us... close enough to even see surface details without a telescope.
That said, Phobos has some interesting properties as a moon. It can only be seen on Mars at latitudes fairly close to the equator as it travels at a comparatively low altitude.... something more akin to the altitude that the International Space Station travels here around the Earth. Even more odd though is that it "rises" in the west and "sets" in the east as its orbital period is less than a day, thus it would also have a "lunar eclipse" every time it completes an orbit. A really interesting phenomena is a transit of Phobos from Mars... essentially an eclipse of the Sun, but Phobos doesn't quite cover the full disc of the sun because it is much smaller. Again, these transits happen every orbit somewhere on Mars.
As you pointed out, Phobos would be seen as something much smaller. If I had to guess, it would be roughly the size of the Sea of Tranquility, in terms of the visual appearance from the surface of Mars compared to what you see in the night sky here on the Earth. It would still be something you would notice in the night sky on Mars and I think if people ever do make the trip to Mars, seeing Phobos would be something people would enjoy watching and taking the time to look at if the opportunity came up.
I for one was disappointed, but only because I fully expected to see evidence of leather goddesses.
Damnit.
OTOH, the sense of wonder was less to do with eye-candy, and more to do with mentally placing myself on that remote plain, watching the thing rise. Sort of like how I felt the first time I saw a satellite pass over on a clear, moonless evening in the country.
Sure, it's just a dot, but as someone elsewhere in here said, when you know a little about what you're watching, that little moving dot becomes pretty fricking amazing.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
500, we could probably even have some sort of replicator magic doodaa thing that harry potters food in to existence or something.
Food is the first of the five Principal Exceptions to Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration. It might be magic, but it isn't Harry Potter's magic.
It's Scotty magic. He's a whiz with the replicators.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Derp.
I drank what? -- Socrates
that ain't no moon...
Um, recession ended a few years ago. The economy has shown improvement over the last 3 months in unemployment, the stock market, and consumer spending. We are still the world's largest manufacturer, with many companies building factories and foreign companies returning manufacturing here, and China owns far less debt than Japan and France (and all foreign holdings is a small fraction of total debt).
Businesses exist for profit. There is no current economic motivation for a business to take pictures on Mars...so it is done by government for the good of man. NASA creates a lot of jobs and technologies that private businesses would not have as there was no profit motive.
Did you really say Venezuela is a country to emulate? You realize they confiscated guns to prevent armed protests for Chavez's reelection right? Might want to look at La Guardia Nacional en Venezuela and see what they do...
I think the problem is that unless you're very familiar with Mars and its satellites it's a little bit of a let down to see a group of pixels move across the screen
What are you talking about? When I first saw Phobos being rendered before my eyes, even if at a shoddier pixel count than one would like, I was instantly amazed. The sense of wonder took whole weeks to dissipate, and got a second wind when I reached the Cyberdemon. And I knew absolutely jack about Mars back then.
I would go for the lack of sense of wonder... Mooms risins on snother worl wow.d.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Friggin blackberry...
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace