3/3 The comet's brightness wasn't well known in advance, so we hedged our bets with a few different exposure times. We managed to obtain four images, only two of which were useful.

2/ To photograph the comet, we had to turn the orbiter away from Mars, point it in precisely the right direction and then sweep the camera's field of view across the target at a much slower rate than the spacecraft was designed for.

1/ We're designed to take fast exposures of the bright Martian surface. We can't stare at dim astronomical objects for long times like a traditional telescope, as noise in the detector becomes too high.

Many of the names, as you might already know, stem from mythology. "Hellas Planitia" is merely "the plains of Hellas (Greece)". But there is also Athabasca Valles, whose name derives from the place name in the Cree language of western Canada.

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) decides planet and feature names based on a set of rules and themes, with proposals often coming from astronomers or the public. They wind up being voted on by that body.