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Hubble's Eye on Mars

Wednesday, August 27, 2003

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope snapshot of Mars
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope snapshot of Mars

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope took this snapshot of Mars 11 hours before the planet made its closest approach to Earth. The two planets are 34,648,840 miles (55,760,220 km) apart. This image was made from a series of exposures taken between 6:20 p.m. and 7:12 p.m. EDT Aug. 26 with Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2.

Photo credit: NASA/J. Bell (Cornell U.) and M. Wolff (SSI)

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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope made observations of the planet Mars on August 26 and 27, when Earth and Mars were closer together than they have been in the last 60,000 years. As Hubble's high-resolution images of the Red Planet are received at the Space Telescope Science Institute and are digitally processed by the Mars observing team, they will be released to the public and news media via the Internet. The Hubble images are the sharpest views of Mars ever taken from Earth. They reveal surface details as small as 17 miles (24 km) across. Though NASA's Mars-orbiting spacecraft can photograph the Red Planet in much finer detail, Hubble routinely serves as a "weather satellite" for tracking atmospheric changes on Mars and for probing its geology on a global scale.

More: NASA - Hubble Space Telescope's Viewing Plans For Earth's 'Close Encounter' With Mars

Link: Sky & Telescope - Mars at Its All-Time Finest

Posted by HotTopics in Hubble at 12:00

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