Talk:Phobos (moon)

Orbital Speeds

Would it be possible to provide maximum and minimum orbital speeds in addition to just the average?

Discovery Dates

Fact checking is crucial, guys. This U.S. Naval Observatory page has a detailed account of the discovery of Phobos and Deimos: http://www.usno.navy.mil/hallmedal.html

Within we can read that "[...] I found a faint object on the following side and a little north of the planet. [...] This was at half past two o'clock on the night of the 11th." (discovery of Deimos on August 12). And later: "On August 17th while waiting and watching for the outer moon, the inner one was discovered." (discovery of Phobos on August 17, possibly 18).

Urhixidur 12:32, 2004 Jul 8 (UTC)

Oops, sorry, I went and changed it to August 11 before reading this.

The key is here: [1] (for Deimos, and click on "Next page" for Phobos).

For Deimos, we have first observation at "August 11 14h40m Washington M.T."

For Deimos, we have second observation at "August 16 13h07m Washington M.T."

For Phobos, we have first observation at "August 17 16h06m Washington M.T."

W.M.T. means "Washington meridian time". US Naval Observatory (Washington) (before 1893) is observatory code 787 (787 282.9494 0.77934 +0.62451 U.S. Naval Obs., Washington (before 1893)) [2] That's 77.0506°W longitude, or 5 hours, 8 minutes, 12 seconds time difference from Greenwich Meridian Time.

They weren't using time zones yet, and definitely they weren't using daylight saving time yet, and obviously they were using the old astronomical convention of the day beginning at noon.

A quick check: to find moons, they were observing Mars at its opposition. Mars was reaching its highest point in the sky at the meridian about 2 am at night. Mars was at about -10° declination at the 1877 opposition, so they were making their observations while Mars was not too far from peak altitude of about 40° from the horizon.

So you are probably right, times of discovery were August 12 at 02:40 local time and August 18 at 04:06 local time. Add 5 hours 8 minutes to convert to UTC.

We can play with

• http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/

to try to get a view of what Mars and satellites looked like at the time in question. I'd like to get an exact match with Hall's reported position angles and separations, then we can be sure.

• Deimos August 12 1877 07:48 UTC ("on the following side and a little north of the planet")
• Deimos August 17 1877 06:15 UTC ("again on the following side... "near one of its elongations")
• Phobos August 18 1877 09:14 UTC

We could try

• http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.html

but it won't compute positions of Phobos or Deimos before 1976.

-- Curps 21:44, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I've changed the discovery time from UTC to GMT. UTC is based on TAI, which was only defined in 1955. UTC did not exist in 1877. The discussion above leads me to believe the calculation is correct even if the label was not. (I assume that "Greenwich Meridian Time" is intended to mean "Greenwich Mean Time.") Peter 03:12, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Next trick

(moved to Talk:Timeline of natural satellites)

Surface Gravity

I'm going to switch the mm/s² back to m/s². Granted, if this were an independent article mm/s² would be preferable, but it is not; it is part of a large series of articles, and sticking to a single unit (m/s²) is necessary for comparison purposes.

Urhixidur 12:34, 2004 Jul 12 (UTC)

Surface dust impossible?

How can it have surface dust if it's inside its Roche Limit? Wouldn't tidal forces tend to cause the dust to lift from the surface and either dissipate into space, or fall toward Mars? --P3d0 19:17, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'll take a stab at it: Tidal "forces" aren't really forces, they're more like a difference of force. Let's say I could grab Phobos by two ends and pull it towards me. If I pulled harder on the side nearer to me, Phobos would feel as if it were being pulled apart. This is what Mars's gravity is doing. The force from gravity is weaker on the far side of Phobos because it's farther away from the planet. The apparent force between two sides of Phobos is much larger than parts of Phobos which are near each other. Dust lying on the surface feels a minimal tidal "force" with respect to the surface it is near because they are close. The collective gravity of Phobos, however, will keep the dust on the surface. If Mars had stronger gravity, though, it could pull the dust right off the surface. Peter 00:07, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

That doesn't seem right since being within the Roche limit should mean the tidal force at the inner and outer tips are strong enough to overcome Phobos' gravity, by the definition of "Roche limit". I'll take another stab. The tidal force is strongest at the point closest to Mars and the point farthest away from Mars; it falls off to nothing at the "middle" of the moon. So perhaps the dust is only present in a belt around the midsection of the moon, with dust-free "peaks" at the two tips. Bryan 00:35, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I like that explanation. Because Phobos is tidally locked, dust could indeed settle at the midsection. It would be interesting to know whether measurements confirm this. Also, while the tidal force is a repulsive force at the near and far ends of Phobos, I think it is mildly attractive at the midsection, which might help the dust to settle there. (If you imagine the force vectors at the two opposite limbs of Phobos, they are not parallel, but both point toward Mars' center.) --P3d0 03:32, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

There does seem to be quite a lot of dust on Phobos (according to the page), so it's probably not impossible. Let's say Phobos is like a stretched spring with one end always pointing towards Mars. The tension on the spring is the tidal "force". The greater the tidal "force", the longer the spring will be stretched. But, let's say we look at only the first half of the spring. How much tidal "force" is there? I think it will be half as strong. If we pursue this exercise down to the scale of dust, the forces will be quite small relative to that applied to the moon as a whole. In the case of Phobos, this force is apparently less than the force of gravity attracting the dust to the moon. Peter 04:50, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

No, I still don't think this is right. If this was the case then passing the Roche limit would never result in a body being broken up by tidal force. The cause of this "force" is the difference between the velocity of a particle on the moon's surface and the velocity of a stable orbit at that distance - the stuff on the inner end of the moon is moving slower than it "should" and the stuff on the outer end is moving faster. Remove the influence of the moon forcing them to follow the moon's orbit and those particles would move off into different paths. It has nothing to do with the size of the particle. Bryan 07:47, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Maybe there's another force between the dust particles, like static electricity or some kind of adhesion. Failing that, perhaps Phobos is not inside its roche limit after all. Or maybe we all misunderstand the roche limit. --P3d0 12:39, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I don't believe Phobos is within its Roche limit. It may well be within what the Roche limit would be if it were a liquid moon, but it is less prolate than a liquid moon would be at the Roche limit- using the formulae on the Wolfram page, at the Roche limit the ratio between the semimajor and both semiminor axes would be 1.952- Phobos isn't a perfect prolate spheroid, and the ratio between its largest and smallest axis length is only 1.45. I have a reference from Icarus from 2001 which states that "...assuming a typical friction angle of 30°,it is clearly nowhere near a tidal limit for a MC body, although it may be at the (fluid) Roche limit depending on the exact value for its density." MC appears to be "zero-cohesion Mohr-Coulomb". If Phobos is a 'rubble pile' it would need an 'angle of friction' of at least 7.1° for stability at its current orbit of 2.76 R. (R is the radius of Mars) Assuming a 'typical friction angle of 30°' Phobos should remain tidally stable until its orbit gets as close as 2.12 R.

I may make some significant edits at this point, I think the Phobos page as it stands is in error. Does anyone have any citations (preferably in another peer-reviewed academic journal) which states that Phobos is within its Roche limit? --Noren 21:28, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

(William M. Connolley 09:08, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)) Tidal forces don't fall to zero at the "middle" - they are attractive there. See Image:Tidal-forces-calculated.png from tidal force.

I'm not sure if this was added after or before you guys had this disucssion, but it says in the artilce "it has been calculated that Phobos is stable with respect to tidal forces, but it is estimated that Phobos will pass the Roche Limit for a rubble pile of its description when its orbital radius drops to about 8400 km, and will likely break up soon afterwards." So, basically, it is not inside the Roche Limit yet.

The page as it existed during most of the above discussion claimed that Phobos was within its Roche limit. I added the phrase you quote to the main page shortly after posting the above to this discussion, the 8400 km figure used on the page was derived from the 2.12 R (mars) given in the above reference. I initially wanted to be sure I wasn't missing any evidence to the contrary by asking for it here... shortly after that I decided to go ahead and be bold and edit it myself. --Noren 17:47, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Millisecond precision in orbit period

Yes, we do know it to about 1 ms. See http://exp.arc.nasa.gov/downloads/celestia/data/solarsys.ssc. Remember that you can observe over a great number of revolutions and the divide by that number, so precision grows with time.

Urhixidur 17:12, 2004 Sep 2 (UTC)

I believe we can time a single revolution to that accuracy. Will subsequent orbits vary by less than 1ms? Surely Mars is not that uniform, perturbation by Jupiter must be on that order of magnitude. Unfortunately I don't know how to calculate either of those effects, so I guess I'll take your word for it. --P3d0 19:11, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Urhixidur. The reverse or the above is true- I expect we can't time a single revolution to that accuracy(I doubt the position is known that well), but we can time many of them and take the average, just as Urhixidur describes. The orbital period should be quite uniform, I believe. Mars' gravity should be the same during each orbit- no change in period resulting from there- and the gravity gradient from Jupiter should be extremely small. The constant component of any pull from Jupiter or another body will effect both Mars and Phobos equally, and thus cannot influence the period. Diemos might conceivably be relevant, however, though I think the orbit period is by definition an average anyhow. --Noren 20:34, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I think you're right about Jupiter's pull. I disagree on the other points, but not strongly enough to kick up a fuss.  :-) --P3d0 04:25, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Formatting

I am having trouble getting the formatting to work on 800x600 resolution. That image in the middle kind of mucks things up. I kept tweeking with it and got it to work for this resolution, but don't know the impact at other resolutions.

Mass in Earths

is given by 1.07 × 10¹⁶ kg (1.8 µEarths).

There seems to be a misscalculation here. I'm getting 50.58 nano Earths.

Could someone please check this and either correct the article or my calculation? Thanks 84.160.196.73 09:38, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well, I also did the same calculation and came up with yet another result, namely 1.8 nanoEarths. I went ahead and put this in the article; if I'm mistaken then it should be reedited, of course.

${\frac {M_{Phobos}}{M_{Earth}}}\cong {\frac {1.07\times 10^{16}}{5.9736\times 10^{24}}}\cong 1.79\times 10^{-9}$ -Noren 06:02, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I confirm Noren's result.

Urhixidur 13:07, 2005 Mar 15 (UTC)

In a related change, the volume in Earths was also mistakenly expressed in microearths rather than nanoearths. (As something of a sanity check, I expected comparative volume and mass to be of the same order of magnitude, and they previously were not.) -Noren 00:36, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

pronunciation

I had added the alternate pronunciation fob'-us, but it's pretty rare, so I'm taking it out. It's given as an alternate pronunciation in Gayley's Classic Myths in English Literature and in Art. In the OED, not even the much more common cognate "phobic" has a variant with that vowel. Put it back if you like... --kwami 07:52, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The adjectival form Phobian is fairly common, and consistant with the Greek. kwami 2005 June 30 06:19 (UTC)

As seen from...

"As seen from Phobos, Mars would be 6400 times larger and 2500 times brighter than the full Moon as seen from Earth" it isn't supposed to be as seen from Mars, Phobos...?

No. Phobos looks tiny as seen from Mars. Mars looks huge as seen from Phobos. So it's correct. The Singing Badger 01:04, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The table on the side

I was looking at this website and I realized that the table on the side of this page is a little hard to read. If somebody could please change the format of this, seeing as I don't know how, I, along with many others I'm sure, would greatly appreciate it. Thank you very much

What exactly do you have trouble with? Font? Text size? Lines between cells (or lack thereof)? Something else?

Urhixidur 20:56, 2005 May 11 (UTC)

I'm guessing that their problem is that there's no gridlines. It does make it hard to read. Ravenswood 21:41, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Pre-Discovery?!?

That "Pre-discovery" section is bereft of any references and hard facts. "It is said that he saw them in a dream"? Who said that? When? What was the source? What does "some accuracy" mean? All I see is a subjective narative that doesnt deserve to be featured so prominently in this article. I am removing it with the expectation that if someone wants to include it, they actually find some content to go with it as well. Asteron ノレツァ 18:28, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

This is a fairly well-known bit of astronomical lore (see for instance [3]), though written in a rather odd way. I've rewritten it and moved it to the bottom of the page as "trivia" (and likewise on the Deimos page). -- Curps 19:39, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

View from Mars

I can't find a clear statement, or number that tells me if Phobos (or Deimos for that matter) appears larger from the surface of mars than our moon appears from the surface of earth. Considering how close Phobos is, I initially believed it to be larger, but because of its small size, I may be smaller. If we could get some sort of photograph of it in the sky, that would be great. The current one of Phobos passing by the sun doesn't give you a good idea of what it looks like to a person on mars.--Ikiroid 17:16, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Hi there! Since Mars is about 1.5 times further from the Sun than Earth, so the Sun seen in the Phobos eclipse movie is also 1.5 times smaller than that seen from the Earth. On Earth, the moon is almost exactly the same angular size as the Sun. That gives a scale. Personally I can't think of a better photo than the eclipse movie to give a sense of scale. In this respect, check out also moon illusion. Deuar 20:09, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for the response, I'll add that into the article if it hasn't been done already.--Ikiroid 05:24, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Remember that the Moon's apparent size is about the same as the Sun's, when viewed from Earth's surface (this is what makes solar eclipses so interesting). From Mars, the Sun appears smaller, since Mars is further away. And then the transit images clearly show Phodos does not eclipse the Sun entirely, hence Phobos appears considerably smaller (to a Martian observer) than the Moon does (to an Earth observer). Urhixidur 18:08, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Is Phobos even a moon?

Should we note that Phobos is clearly not a moon in the sense that Luna, Umbriel, etc. are? I mean, it's traditionally been called a moon, but it's incredibly small (its mass is equivalent to 1.8 billionth Earths) and, more importantly, it isn't even spherical and is probably an asteroid, or possibly a chunk of Mars ejected from a collision with a planetoid.

• Any natural body orbiting another natural body is a moon, no matter the size. Just because it is small doesn't mean it's not a moon. Moons like our own, Titan, Charon, Ganymede, etc., are moons in hydrostatic equilibrium.

Swift's 'Prediction'

I suggest that if anyone has any sourced info, including published speculations, on that issue, to go ahead and insert it. I reverted what I felt was an unsourced WP:OR. If we end up with multiple sourced explanations, we may possibly need to present all of them. Thanks, Crum375 21:05, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I have added a section to the "Literature" section noting Swift's mention of two moons of Mars in Gulliver's visit to Laputa. The naming of features after characters from Gulliver is clearly a reference to this association. There is no evidence whatsoever that Swift had any knowledge of Phobos and Deimos, but it is a sufficiently striking literary parallel that it was taken into account by the IAU --APRCooper (talk) 18:15, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Craters

In the list of features page (separate) there are these craters:

Clustril 	Character in Gulliver's Travels
D'Arrest 	Heinrich Louis d'Arrest
Drunlo 	        Character in Gulliver's Travels
Flimnap 	Character in Gulliver's Travels
Gulliver 	Main character of Gulliver's Travels
Hall 	        Asaph Hall
Limtoc 	        Character in Gulliver's Travels
Reldresal 	Character in Gulliver's Travels
Roche 	        Édouard Roche
Sharpless 	Bevan Sharpless
Skyresh 	Character in Gulliver's Travels
Stickney 	Angeline Stickney
Todd 	        David Peck Todd
Wendell 	Oliver Wendell

could we get some kind of map or labelled picture to show where they are? GB 01:59, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

GA review

Overall, the article is in pretty good shape. Here are my comments.

• Technical notes:
  • Use {{cite_journal}} instead of {{cite_web}} where applicable (e.g., for the first note which is from The Observatory).
  • The formatting of the quote from Asaph Hall could be better. It should be indented or set off in some other way (consider using a different quotation template), and it should have line breaks between paragraphs. The picture on the left may make it difficult to distinguish the indenting, however, so a box should be considered.
  • Are the red links likely candidates for their own articles? If not, they should be unlinked.
  • The article might be added to more categories.
  • Deimos shouldn't appear in the "See also" section.
    •  Done Shrewpelt (talk) 16:35, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
  • The headings use both single and double scare quotes. Pick one.

• Stylistic notes:
  • The article uses the passive voice too much. Rephrase to active voice.
  • Asaph Hall's full name needn't be repeated. "Hall" is fine after the first usage.
  • The quotation from Hall is a bit long, not particularly necessary, and redundant with the non-quoted text. It should be reduced to a pithy or particularly interesting part and/or be summarized in non-quoted prose.
  • The last sentence under "Death of a moon" is rather unwieldy. It should be rephrased and perhaps broken in two.
  • Sentences can be a little choppy. For instance, consider combining one or more short sentences in this passage:

Asaph Hall also discovered Deimos, Mars' other moon. At the time, he was deliberately searching for Martain moons. Hall had previously seen what appeared to be a Martian moon on August 10. Due to bad weather, he did not definitively identify them until later.

• Content notes:
  • I'd prefer the etymology that gives a bit more explanation and is in the active voice. E.g., "Henry Madan (1838–1901), Science Master of Eton, suggested the names based on book XV of the Iliad in which Ares, who corresponds to the Roman god Mars, summons his sons Dread (Deimos) and Fear (Phobos)."
  • Regarding Swift's prediction, the article says, "This is regarded as a fascinating coincidence." First this is in the passive voice, which should be avoided, and it doesn't cite it's sources (cf. also words which editorialize with respect to "fascinating").
  • Obviously, the {{original research}} tag under "Orbital characteristics" needs to be rectified.
  • "Secular acceleration" is not defined/wikilinked.
  • Some other features listed in the previous section on this talk page could be added without becoming too "listy."

I'm going to fail this nomination primarily because of the original research and the passive voice, but I think these could be corrected after which the article should be renominated. --Flex (talk|contribs) 22:15, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

The Hurtling moons of Barsoom

The first ever time I recall hearing about the moons of Mars, and specifically Phobos, I was told the story of how Phobos generated the names "The Hurtling moons of Barsoom" by Edgar Rice Burroughs. To this day I still think of Phobos in this way. Does anybody feel this is notable for the page on Phobos?

"In 1912 Edgar Rice Burroughs published a story entitled "Under the Moons of Mars" (printed in book form in 1917 as 'A Princess of Mars') in which he referred to the "hurtling moons of Barsoom" (Barsoom being the "native" word for Mars in the fictional account). Burroughs was inspired by the fact that Phobos, having an orbital period of slightly less than 8 hours, would appear from Mars to rise in the west and set in the east only five and a half hours later. " http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1300.html

Or perhaps under Phobos and Deimos in fiction...

Beeawwb 02:04, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Meaning of name

At the recent Phobos Deimos conference, Steven Dick (the NASA historian), surprised many of us by telling us that Phobos means flight and Deimos means fear. I found this reference backing him up, but are there any greek experts to confirm this? We should change this in the article if this is true. http://daac.gsfc.nasa.gov/geomorphology/GEO_10/GEO_PLATE_P-9.shtml Jespley 22:01, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

See Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature. It states that Phobos also means "flight" (in addition to fear?) and that Deimos means fear (Panic is a sudden fear). But I know nothing about nomenclature. -- Kheider 23:16, 12 November 2007 (UTC)