                        Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                                 2025 May 24

                            Deimos Before Sunrise
                       Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech

   Explanation: Deimos takes 30 hours and 18 minutes to complete one orbit
   around the Red Planet. That's a little more than one Martian day or sol
   which is about 24 hours and 40 minutes long, so Deimos drifts westward
   across the Martian sky. About 15 kilometers across at its widest, the
   smallest of Mars' two moons is bright though. In fact Deimos is the
   brightest celestial object in this Martian skyscape captured before
   sunrise by Perseverance on March 1, the 1,433rd sol of the Mars rover's
   mission. The image is a composed of 16 exposures recorded by one of the
   rover's navigation cameras. The individual exposures were combined into
   a single image for an enhanced low light view. Regulus and Algeiba,
   bright stars in the constellation Leo, are also visible in the dark
   Martian predawn sky.

                     Tomorrow's picture: beneath Jupiter
     __________________________________________________________________

       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
            NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply.
                NASA Web Privacy Policy and Important Notices
                      A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC,
                           NASA Science Activation
                             & Michigan Tech. U.

