Article Posted on : - Jun 20, 2011

Paths of Phobos and Mars Express. Photo ESA.

WASHINGTON (BNS): An unusual alignment of Jupiter and the Martian moon Phobos was captured by ESA’s Mars Express this month, according to ESA.

The Mars Express spacecraft was aligned with a distance of 11389 km from Phobos and 529 million km to Jupiter on 1st June 2011.

The whole data of the movement will verify and even improve the knowledge of the orbital position of the martian moon, ESA said.

Overall 104 images of the alignment were captured within a period of 68 seconds, with the help of High Resolution Stereo Camera fitted on Mars Express.

Astronomers have processed the images into a movie by the Department of Planetary Sciences and Remote Sensing at the Institute of Geological Sciences of the Freie Universitat Berlin.