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Perhaps inspired by Kepler (and quoting Kepler's third law of planetary motion), Jonathan Swift's satire Gulliver's Travels (1726) refers to two moons in Part 3, Chapter 3 (the "Voyage to Laputa"), in which Laputa's astronomers are described as having discovered two satellites of Mars orbiting at distances of 3 and 5 Martian diameters with ...
Phobos has dimensions of 26 by 23 by 18 kilometres (16 mi × 14 mi × 11 mi), [7] and retains too little mass to be rounded under its own gravity. Phobos does not have an atmosphere due to its low mass and low gravity. [19] It is one of the least reflective bodies in the Solar System, with an albedo of about 0.071. [20]
Since the late 20th century, Mars has been explored by uncrewed spacecraft and rovers, with the first flyby by the Mariner 4 probe in 1965, the first orbit by the Mars 2 probe in 1971, and the first landing by the Viking 1 probe in 1976. As of 2023, there are at least 11 active probes orbiting Mars or on the Martian surface.
Mars’s moons don’t get much credit. But they’re small, lifeless, and weird little things. Here’s everything you should know about them.
Mars has an orbit with a semimajor axis of 1.524 astronomical units (228 million km) (12.673 light minutes), and an eccentricity of 0.0934. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] The planet orbits the Sun in 687 days [ 3 ] and travels 9.55 AU in doing so, [ 4 ] making the average orbital speed 24 km/s.
Curiosity's view of the Mars moons: Phobos passing in front of Deimos in real-time (video-gif, 1 August 2013) As seen from Mars, Deimos would have an angular diameter of no more than 2.5 minutes (sixty minutes make one degree), one twelfth of the width of the Moon as seen from Earth, and would therefore appear almost star-like to the naked eye ...
Mars may have had a single moon before something smashed into it, tearing it asunder into the two moons we see today. In a study published Monday in Nature, scientists explained how they used the ...
The good news is, you don’t have to have a telescope to enjoy Mars at opposition! Just look up into the sky after sunset, and Mars will be there. It will be hard to miss!