Mars and its moons
Phobos and Deimos
animation spanning 2.5 hours on 12-26-07
from 4:30 to 7:02 UT
This a GIF animation
of Mars and its moons from video results over a 2.5 hour period starting at 4:30
UT on December 26, 2007. It was taken with an Astro-Physics 140EDF refractor and
DMK21AF04.AS video camera at about f/14 (over 1900mm effective focal length). It's been cropped and
resized here. Deimos
is visible in all frames retreating from Mars towards the 10 o'clock position,
and at the same clock position Phobos peaks out of the overexposed glare of Mars
(blackened here with the pasting in of properly exposed Mars) for a few frames.
Since the video sequence tracks Mars, a few background stars appear to travel
from R to L, the brightest of which is GSC0188500703 (11.07mag). Fainter
GSC0188500704 (13.12) appears from behind Mars near Phobos.
Celestial north is up in this animation.
Each frame is the result of a short 2 minute video
recorded at exposure settings for the faint moons which greatly overexposed
Mars, immediately followed by a shorter video recorded at proper settings for Mars
itself. The properly exposed Mars results were then pasted over the very bright
and bloated overexposed
Mars images in the corresponding moon frames. There are 16 frames in this animation,
each depict 10 minute intervals.