Phobos Then and Now

[FieryIce]

A Viking 1 image along side a more recent ESA's Mars Express image.



Mars' moon Phobos and Stickney crater from 1600 km, 1977-06-10
Martian moon Phobos in detail, less than 200 kilometres, 11 November 2004

[Vision]

What causes the grooving? and no impactors =(

[BMAONE23]

"Grooving".... no ideas yet, further close-up study would be needed to determine the cause.
As far as impactors go, The mass of the object is so minimal that there would be negligeable accelleration towards the surface so impact speed would likely be the difference between the natural speed of both objects or their combined speed.
I don't believe there has been sufficiently close images taken that would allow for the locating of remnant surface impactors.

I have noticed what could be impactor fragments (or just boulders) lying at the bottom of some craters on Iapetus

[BMAONE23]

A Viking 1 image along side a more recent ESA's Mars Express image.



Mars' moon Phobos and Stickney crater from 1600 km, 1977-06-10
Martian moon Phobos in detail, less than 200 kilometres, 11 November 2004

Anyone with a photo stacker program that could combine these two great images into 1 full moon view?

[geckzilla]

This is hard, they don't line up as well as it looks like they do. I ended up distorting the Viking image a lot.

[BMAONE23]

NICE JOB

[Vision]

Nice job indeed, you can tell they dont line up perfectly.

[FieryIce]

There are a few released images of Phobos that are somewhat good images, you just have to search them out.


PIA04589: Phobos Over the Martian Limb

What causes the grooving? and no impactors =(

The grooves are crater chains. The ESA proved the crater chains on the leading edge of Phobos does not show the leading edge crater chains to be larger than the trailing edge crater chains so their theory that Phobos flew through Mars debris or flew through ejecta debris is not valid or was not validated, so Phobos's crater chains are not the result of ejecta from Stickney crater or flying through debris.
1st Mars Express Conference Presentations

Even the caption to that image refers to the crater chains as grooves or aligned pits, which isn’t entirely accurate wording.

No impactors….well…fascinating isn’t it!

[NoelC]

I tried out some new techniques I've developed for removing pattern noise on the above image of Phobos, then digitally enhanced the texture to help bring out the grooves/lines/mining tracks/whatever.

Click on this image to see a larger one.



-Noel

[FieryIce]

I stick to the rule of thumb never to manipulate the images and repost it publicly but to use the actual image as it was issued so not to be accused of manipulation.

[NoelC]

Well, I happen to know a thing or two about image processing, and sometimes it's easier to visualize the real object if the digital artifacts are reduced. And don't kid yourself. Every image ever published is digitally processed.

I posted the image above purely to foster interest and discussion.

-Noel

[craterchains]

We don't kid ourselves Noel, but have been kicked in the teeth and falsely accused of manipulation far too many times to ever publish any "doctored" images we may have "enhanced" to show our view point. Thus FieryIce, and I, are a bit "touchy" about photo manipulations being used by us in our research into a S.E.T.I. or space war theory. Yes, we know that all photos published by our tax dollars have been "manipulated".

Why is it nobody wants to admit "it looks like" straifing runs?

P.S. Great job of enhancement though. thank you.