Large white letter "N" found on Mars moon! Oh, nevermind. Amazing pics, however!

For the very first time, the martian moons Phobos and Deimos have been caught on camera together. ESA's Mars Express orbiter took these pioneering images last month. Apart from their ‘wow’ factor, these unique images will help the HRSC team validate and refine existing orbit models of the two moons.

The images were acquired with the Super Resolution Channel (SRC) of the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). The camera took 130 images of the moons on 5 November at 9:14 CET over period of 1.5 minutes at intervals of 1s, speeding up to 0.5-s intervals toward the end. The image resolution is 110 m/pixel for Phobos and 240 m/pixel for Deimos — Deimos was more than twice as far from the camera.

The Super Resolution Channel of the HRSC uses an additional lens, which has a very narrow field of view of just 0.5°, providing four times the resolution of the HRSC colour stereo channel.

Close-up of Phobos, acquired on 28 July 2008

In addition to producing high-resolution maps of the surface of Mars in colour and in 3D, the exploration of Phobos is a scientific priority for the HRSC team. The potato-shaped, 27 × 22 × 18 km moon has already been photographed 127 times by the HRSC, improving our knowledge of the topography of the moon, and providing insight into its origins and development.

This particular image was acquired on 28 July 2008 with the nadir channel of the HRSC. Mars Express was 351 km from Phobos at the time of exposure and the resolution is 14/pixel. The image shows the northern hemisphere of Phobos marked with innumerable meteor craters. The sign N indicates the location of the North Pole.

Mars Express has come as close as 93 kilometres to the moon which circles the planet in an almost circular equatorial orbit at a distance of 6000 kilometres.

via ESA - Mars Express - Pioneering images of both martian moons.