Solar Eclipse Video by Mars Satellite

The Perseverance vehicle, launched by NASA in July 2020 and landed on Mars on February 18, 2021, has shared many impressive images from Mars to date. But a video shot by Perseverance and newly released by NASA was the kind of thing that would make you throw away all these impressive images.

The spacecraft succeeded in capturing the passage of Mars’ potato-shaped moon Phobos in front of the Sun, namely a Solar eclipse on Mars. The video, shot with the high-quality Mastcam-Z camera system on the spacecraft, was then zoomed in as much as possible and presented at the highest frame rate. The resulting video was as follows:

Potato-shaped moon of Mars, Phobos, passes in front of the Sun

The solar eclipse we see above took place on April 2, 2022 on the Earth calendar. In the eclipse, which lasted for about 40 seconds, Perseverance’s special solar filters were also what allowed it to shoot the Sun directly. Thanks to these filters, Perseverance can project its cameras directly at the Sun and even reveal some details of the Sun.

Phobos, which we see passing in front of the Sun, is 157 times smaller than our moon, the Moon, and this isn’t actually the first time it has been imaged this way. Phobos’ eclipse was first observed in 2004 by the Spirit and Oppurtunity instruments over the past 18 years, and was filmed for the first time by Curiosity in 2019.