![]() Rayl's latest monthly update on the status of the rovers. Ted said he couldn't find WD5 in the photos right off the bat, but would keep looking!Īnd speaking of Mars, don't miss A. A new view of the Eagle Nebula, one of the two largest and sharpest images Hubble Space Telescope has ever. Telescope has also discovered four tiny satellites orbiting Pluto and Charon. Without pretty good knowledge of WD5's position with respect to Mars, it'll be impossible to find it again, as Mars' gravity probably shifted its orbit by quite a lot. NASA Images of Planets, Stars, Galaxies, Nebulae, Black Holes, Dark Matter. The images were taken in an effort to spot WD5, and if the imaging were successful, it would allow astronomers to determine the course of the asteroid past Mars, which would, in turn, allow them to calculate its future path. But there was another reason to take these photos, which I explained at length in this post: on that date, a tiny near-Earth asteroid called 2007 WD5 was making a very close approach to Mars, and had briefly been considered an impact risk for the Red Planet. Planetary astronomers often use Hubble to take photos of the planets (particularly the nearer ones, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) every time there is a conjunction, when Earth and another planet line up on the same side of the Sun, so that the distance between Hubble and the planet is at a minimum. To the east of them, at the center of the disk, you can just see the distinctive equatorial stripe of Valles Marineris. At the left you can see the three Tharsis montes poking up as dark spots rising through the high cloud. A bright blob called Argyre is at the bottom of the disk, and over all of it is printed wispy white clouds, made of water vapor.īut Hubble can see some of the details first revealed to us by orbiters. Below that, at the center of the disk, is a darker region made of Solis Lacus at left, Aurorae sinus at center, and on the right-hand edge of the disk, Sinus Meridiani, where Opportunity still roves. Below Acidalia, a bright extension from the Tharsis region is Chryse planitia, where both Viking 1 and Pathfinder landed. Occupying the upper left quadrant is the bright red of Tharsis, and at upper center and right is the dark blob of Acidalia. Mostly, you see areas of brighter red and darker purplish color, the classically named albedo markings. Hubble images occupy a curious middle ground between the Mars that humans can see with their telescopes and the Mars visible to orbiting spacecraft.
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