With the weather getting nicer, and the skies clearing a bit more; my astronomy outings should be on the increase, and hopefully I will have more stories for you than I have in the past weeks. Warm Spring nights are perfect for doing sidewalk astronomy too, and I hope to be able to get out more this year to share views through my telescopes with those whom may be interested in seeing just what's up there.

In the meantime, there are other interesting stories in space news that I can share, beginning with this one:

New photos of the Mars' moon Phobos reveal the Martian satellite as a strange, potato-shaped moon, and show potential landing zones being considered for a future robotic probe.

The images, taken by Europe's Mars Express spacecraft during a March 7 flyby, reveal the rocky Phobos in stunning detail with a resolution of just 14.5 feet per pixel. The new Phobos photos also show the proposed landing sites for Russia's forthcoming Phobos-Grunt mission, which is designed to bring samples of the Martian moon back to Earth.

The new images follow up on Mars Express' closest-ever flyby of Phobos on March 3. That pass did not yield any pretty pictures, however, as the research experiment ongoing at that time investigated the mass and gravity of the small moon.

The European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft orbits the red planet in a highly elliptical, polar orbit that brings it close to Phobos every five months. It is the only spacecraft currently in orbit around Mars whose orbit
reaches far enough from the planet to provide a close-up view of Phobos.

Like Earth's moon, Phobos always shows the same side to its host planet, so in order to observe its far side a spacecraft must fly beyond Phobos' orbit and look inward. Mars Express did just that during three flybys on March 7, 10 and 13.

On 23 July 2008, the High Resolution Stereo Camera on board the ESA’s Mars Express took the highest-resolution full-disc image yet of the surface of the moon Phobos. Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)

Phobos is the larger of the two moons of Mars. The smaller moon is called Deimos.