MONDAY ASTRONOMY PICTURE PONDERINGS 8/8/2022

Who’s Scared of the Little Potato Moon of Mars?

Mars’s moon Phobos photobombs a photo of Mars

NASA’s Hubble Sees Martian Moon Orbiting the Red Planet sourced from Astropix. Image Credits: NASA and ESA, Provider: Space Telescope Science Institute, Image Source: https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2017/news-2017-29,

Welcome back to the Monday Astronomy Picture Ponderings (MAPPs) series where every Monday I normally pick one of NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) entries from the past seven days to focus on in some way.

Saturday, August 6th’s NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day featured a stereo anaglyph view of Phobos, making it viewable in blue-red 3-D glasses if you have any lying around or want to DIY some. If you don’t, you can still get a basic idea of the moon’s shape and texture without them. The 3D glasses just provide more depth, which is very cool.

Stereo Phobos from Saturday, August 6th’s NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day. Image Credit: G. Neukum (FU Berlin) et al., Mars Express, DLR, ESA

Now, you may be looking at the lumpy potato above and thinking that it looks nothing like our moon, so how could it be a moon? Very briefly, a moon is any naturally orbiting object around a planet (a satellite). While our moon is fairly spherical, a bright white with darker areas, not all are. In fact, there are many different types of moons. If you want to learn more about what makes a moon, a moon, feel free to check out…