NASA’s Perseverance Rover Captures Video of Solar Eclipse on Mars
upstart found a story that led to this one:
The Mastcam-Z camera recorded video of Phobos, one of the Red Planet's two moons:
NASA's Perseverance Mars rover has captured dramatic footage of Phobos, Mars' potato-shaped moon, crossing the face of the Sun. These observations can help scientists better understand the moon's orbit and how its gravity pulls on the Martian surface, ultimately shaping the Red Planet's crust and mantle.
Captured with Perseverance's next-generation Mastcam-Z camera on April 2, the 397th Martian day, or sol, of the mission, the eclipse lasted a little over 40 seconds - much shorter than a typical solar eclipse involving Earth's Moon. (Phobos is about 157 times smaller than Earth's Moon. Mars' other moon, Deimos, is even smaller.)
[...]. I knew it was going to be good, but I didn't expect it to be this amazing," said Rachel Howson of Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, one of the Mastcam-Z team members who operates the camera.
[...] Color also sets this version of a Phobos solar eclipse apart. Mastcam-Z has a solar filter that acts like sunglasses to reduce light intensity. You can see details in the shape of Phobos' shadow, like ridges and bumps on the moon's landscape," said Mark Lemmon, a planetary astronomer with the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, who has orchestrated most of the Phobos observations by Mars rovers. You can also see sunspots. And it's cool that you can see this eclipse exactly as the rover saw it from Mars.
Kudos to the orbitologists who knew the positions of all the appropriate bodies and got the timing right. The really cool video is also up on YouTube (but I don't think you would call this an annular eclipse since nothing looks like an annulus!)
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