[meteorite-list] Phobos Slips Past Jupiter (Mars Express)

[Ron Baalke]

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMJ53E1XOG_index_0.html

Phobos slips past Jupiter
European Space Agency 
17 June 2011

Earlier this month, ESA's Mars Express performed a special manoeuvre to
observe an unusual alignment of Jupiter and the martian moon Phobos. The
impressive images have now been processed into a movie of this rare event.
 
At the moment when Mars Express, Phobos, and Jupiter aligned on 1 June
2011, there was a distance of 11 389 km between the spacecraft and
Phobos, and a further 529 million km to Jupiter.

The High Resolution Stereo Camera on Mars Express was kept fixed on
Jupiter for the conjunction, ensuring that the planet remained static in
the frame. The operation returned a total of 104 images over a period of
68 seconds, all of them taken using the camera'™s super-resolution channel.

By knowing the exact moment when Jupiter passed behind Phobos, the
observation will help to verify and even improve our knowledge of the
orbital position of the martian moon.

The images shown here were processed at the Department of Planetary
Sciences and Remote Sensing at the Institute of Geological Sciences of
the Freie Universität Berlin.  

[Images] 
Conjunction: before, during and after

[Graphics] 
Paths of Phobos and Mars Express
Phobos and Mars Express
 
[Image] 
Phobos and Jupiter in 3D