With a Piece of the Pie Missing...
Singularity Observatory reports Mars has entered a gibbous phase, otherwise known as phase defect of illumination, making it appear smaller, as it recedes away from the Earth and begins to shrink in apparent diameter.
As this image shows, and much like a gibbous phase of the Moon, the right side is missing, cast into the darkness of a massive shadow and hiding many surface features. The domain view, with south up, shows the southern polar cap at the top and a shrinking left-to-right diameter, from a night in September 2018, past opposition. The phase effect is seen to the right.
