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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.
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.
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
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.
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 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?