Deimos is a dark body that appears to be composed of C-type surface materials, similar to that of asteroids found in the outer asteroid belt. Named after the Roman God of dread, Deimos is the smaller of Mars' two moons. Deimos whirls around Mars every 30 hours. The natural moon is 10 by 7.5 miles (16 by 12 kilometers) in size.

Opportunity awoke Thursday morning to "Bad Moon Rising" by Creedence Clearwater Revival in honor of the eclipse. Opportunity took images of the sky in coordination with the European Space Agency's orbiter, Mars Express.

The rover's science and engineering team also took Opportunity throught its most complex robotic arm operations on Mars yet that day. Opportunity took three mosaics on the area dubbed "Last Chance," using the microscopic imager, creating 128 images in over 200 arm moves.

Each "frame" of these mosaics required multiple microscopic images. There are two reasons for this. First, the microscopic imager does not have auto-focus, so the team needed to have Opportunity take and return multiple images at each location at different distances from the rock to get at least one in focus.

A second reason is that the team needed Opportunity to take an extra image at a slightly different angle for each frame to create the right conditions to build stereo and computer-generated graphics of the "topography" of the rock area up close.It took 490 commands to accomplish the task.

After about two-and-a-half hours of microscopic imager maneuvers, the robotic arm placed the Moessbauer spectrometer on a location at "Last Chance" called "Makar."

Special SPACE.com thanks to R.D. "Gus" Frederick for his eagle-eye talents in producing the picture.