I believe Curiosity has just imaged Phobos, and Deimos in one shot.

And there is some detail in the image.
mars.jpl.nasa.gov...
There are some other thumbnails, that look to be more shots, so there will be more full sized images soon.
mars.jpl.nasa.gov...
Scroll down for those. Enough to make a nice animation, once the Full Res are available

Looks like Those moons to me. From our little Astronomer on Mars.

It sure looks like Curiosity took advantage of an opportunity. (see what I did there?)
I think and hope you're right. I'm sure we'll get confirmation very soon.

reply to post by spacedoubt


Indeed, Curiosity has captured Phobos transiting Deimos. The sheer number of images (so far in thumbnail form) suggest that there will be a video.

Here's a cleaned-up image:

(right-click and select "view image" for full-sized version)

UMSF user "Zelenyikot" produced this zoomed-in image, with some of the craters identified, along with a simulated shot from Celestia software:


Here's my close-up (using only pixel resize) with enhanced saturation:


It's amazing how much detail the Mastcam 100 can see in Phobos.

P.S. The last two images above just gave me an idea. I used colour information from the Mastcam image together with the detailed Celestia image, to produce this:


Just how real these colours are, remains to be seen, as they might be simply due to how the camera's sensor and optics work. But they might be the real subtle colours of Phobos

reply to post by spacedoubt

Indeed. I saw this yestrday. That is very very very cool!

Deimos is almost lost in the JPEG compression artifacts, but you can see it at the center, and watch Phobos actually cross right in front of it. I've elnarged it by a factor of three without resampling -- these are all the pixels we have right now, but be patient; we'll get more.

Standing by for bigger resolution.

Linky

Lovely!

Reminds me of reading Heinlein's "Red Planet" when I was a kid.

Thanks for the additional info folks.
Can't wait to see the Larger images.
Although, I have a feeling they (JPl/Nasa) are holding back so they can put out the first animation.

What wouldn't I give to watch that live.

Great images. All of them. I can't get enough of this stuff. ~$heopleNation

two weird little moons that i remember asking my teacher when i was young why they got that names .

and the answer i got was they just appeared in the late 1800s .

buzz aldrins video of the monolith is a good one is phobos hollow

Awesome stuff! The story line for the original DOOM for pc comes to mind.

Oh I love these! I can never get enough of this stuff, I love looking at photos from Mars...fascinating!

Its such a shame there isnt manned missions to mars yet. Or anywhere other than the space station even. One day hopefully in my life time.

I wish i could be an autonomous machine exploring another planet with my every decision mapped out and controlled by a team of brilliant scientists.

reply to post by Thorneblood

You could sing happy birthday to yourself too.



They use different frequencies to sort sample materials.

It's almost like having a telescope on Mars. Here's some more info on the moons:

Orbits:



The orbit of Phobos is decaying. It will eventually get too close to Mars and break up. For a short time Mars will have a small ring like Saturn. This wont happen for 30–50 million years.

Color enhanced images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter:

Here is the video!

It's amazing how much detail the Mastcam captured in Phobos (even if I already said that, lol).

Here's the same animation, but with interpolated frames, making for a smooth time-lapse that matches the actual speed of the event. mars.jpl.nasa.gov...

Very cool animations.

One other image I found today. If you were standing on the surface of Mars, the moons would look like the image below when compared to how our Moon looks like from Earth:



phys.org...

Even though our Moon is much larger than Phobos, Phobos still appears large because it's closer to the surface of Mars than our Moon is to the surface of Earth.

I'm a little surprised as to how large Phobos would appear if you were standing on the surface of Mars.

reply to post by ionwind


I've checked in Stellarium, and Phobos appears smaller than that, approx 1/4 of the Moon diameter. It's a good question, though, I think I'll ask the experts on UMSF.

P.S. Some numbers are given at mars.jpl.nasa.gov... and I used an online calculator at www.1728.org... so the result is Phobos being approximately half the full moon.