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Posted on Friday 12 November 2004 to unknown
Phobos means fear and, frankly, the larger of Mars' two moons has
plenty to worry about. It is on a downward spiral, slowly descending
towards the Martian surface. Within 100 million years the moon will be
torn apart by the tidal
force of Mar's gravity and form a short-lived ring before raining down
as massive meteor shower upon the Martian surface.
The ESA has just released this new image of the moon which shows it
with unprecedented detail. The image was taken with the High Resolution
Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA?s Mars Express spacecraft. The image
on the website shows the 3D as a red-blue anaglyph which needs to be
viewed with red-blue glasses. I know a lot of people don't have these
handy so I have taken the liberty to separate out the colours and
reconstitute them as two separate images which can be viewed in three
dimensions by the cross-eye method.
As usual all caveats apply. If you break your eyes looking at these images, you own both halves.