Doug

And another, better this time





JC.

Looks like they cant get pancam frames taken quick enough to do this properly

None at the spirit site yet though

Doug

Very nice! This rover really is a stargazer!

Yes it would be nice to see a proper annular eclipse.

Does anyone have any idea how common these eclipses are? I'm guessing were in an 'eclipse season' right now and they are not going to keep coming so often.

JC.

I think it's only a 6 week eclipse season - but I imagine it might come around again before mission-end

Doug

The satellites are very nearly on the equator (inclinations of 1 and 1.7 degrees) so the eclipse seasons coincide with the equinoxes, when the sun crosses said equator. The equinox was last Friday.

I have a veeeery old Astronomy program (dated 1993!!!), which can easily calculates oppositions and conjunctions between every Solar System object. It's named Expert Astronomer, is a commercial program, and I payed around 20$ for it , but it's great.

I made an approximate calculation of march Martian Deimos eclipses, and I obtained these results:
(DATE time separation altitude)
2/mar/2004 9:33PM 37.2' 17 deg
4/mar/2004 3:54AM 19.1' 69 deg
9/mar/2004 5:20AM 53.0' 79 deg
10/mar/2004 11:42AM 1.2° 8 deg

I used 1.95S , 5.53W coordinates for Opportunity position, but I think they are not enough accurate, as the graphical simulation of the eclipse... actually does not show an eclipse, but just a Sun-Deimos proximity.
Where could I find a REALLY accurate Opportunity position?

How can I know the exact date/time of already happened&photographed Martian eclipses?

Luca

P.S.
Maybe AstronomyLabs, an old freeware program can also do this calculation, but actually I didn't try it ( I remember it could for Earth/Sun/Moon eclipses).

Nobody remarked on the following series of Phobos eclipse shots from the Pancam on Sol 47:

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...MP2672R8M1.HTML
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...MP2672R8M1.HTML
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...MP2672R8M1.HTML
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...MP2672R8M1.HTML

But they are very nice.

A lot of infomation, including the time the picture was taken, is encoded in the image filenames.

A useful little program for extracting this has been posted to this forum, see

http://mer.rlproject.com/index.php?showtopic=109

JC.