Martian UFO?

[majicbar]

Supposedly a cigar shaped UFO was spotted in images that were taken by the Curriosity Rover. But it is I think an attempt to better refine the orbit of Phobos.

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?s=613&camera=NAV_RIGHT_

This is the webpage from which the photographs were obtained. Click on the SUBFRAME data product, full resolutions for any of them and you will notice that the "stars" are also appearing on the ground. This is because these are time exposures and there are data dropouts being caused by cosmic rays. The SUBFRAME data product is being drawn from the lower left corner of the full image. The full image does not have as many such dropouts in the ground portion of the image because the exposure time is much less, even though in it too the moon, Phobos I believe, does have a slight track. Based on the timestamps posted on the SUBFRAME data product images the time between each image is 2 minutes and three seconds, with I am presuming to be two minute time exposures and three seconds to transmit the frame's image information before starting a new image. If the images were composited together as one, they would form a straight line with missing segments for the three second transmission to the memory of the rover.

The full image is seen here:

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/proj/msl/redops/ods/surface/sol/00613/opgs/edr/ncam/NRB_451931834EDR_F0311330NCAM00554M_.JPG

[majicbar]

Supposedly a cigar shaped UFO was spotted in images that were taken by the Curriosity Rover. But it is I think an attempt to better refine the orbit of Phobos.

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?s=613&camera=NAV_RIGHT_

This is the webpage from which the photographs were obtained. Click on the SUBFRAME data product, full resolutions for any of them and you will notice that the "stars" are also appearing on the ground. This is because these are time exposures and there are data dropouts being caused by cosmic rays. The SUBFRAME data product is being drawn from the lower left corner of the full image. The full image does not have as many such dropouts in the ground portion of the image because the exposure time is much less, even though in it too the moon, Phobos I believe, does have a slight track. Based on the timestamps posted on the SUBFRAME data product images the time between each image is 2 minutes and three seconds, with I am presuming to be two minute time exposures and three seconds to transmit the frame's image information before starting a new image. If the images were composited together as one, they would form a straight line with missing segments for the three second transmission to the memory of the rover.

The full image is seen here:

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/proj/msl/redops/ods/surface/sol/00613/opgs/edr/ncam/NRB_451931834EDR_F0311330NCAM00554M_.JPG
On 4-28-2014 the navigation camera took a series of SUBFRAME data products showing a streak of light, is this a series of time exposures of Phobos taken to better refine its orbit?

JPL's answer:

Hi,

Thank you for your question! If you are asking about these images: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?s=613&camera=NAV_RIGHT_ , you are correct! What is seen is a series of long-exposure images of the Martian moon Phobos. The following news releases touch on the purposes of observing the Martian moons:

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=1509

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=1515

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=1353

We're in a great age of Martian discovery, and we hope everyone around the globe feels a part of it! Please keep following all of our missions at http://mars.nasa.gov or Curiosity's journey at http://mars.nasa.gov/msl.

Thanks again for your message and your interest in Mars exploration!

All the best,

Mars Outreach

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[epo333]

Great to see those links majicbar.

Lots of action on Mars, with Phobos stealing the show.

[majicbar]

Great to see those links majicbar.

Lots of action on Mars, with Phobos stealing the show.
There is a comet that will pass very close to Mars in October, it will be far from Earth but very close Mars, we might be able to learn a lot about this comet with all the observation platforms we have there.