Curiosity Rover Spots a Pair of Solar Eclipses on Mars

There ’s something completely sublime about view solar eclipses from the surface of another planet , as showcased in these new video captivate by NASA ’s Curiosity roamer .

Mars has two small , strangely shaped moons . Phobos is the larger one at 17 Swedish mile ( 27 km ) across , while Deimos is just 9 miles ( 14.5 km ) in diameter . Using its Mastcam , Curiosity of late becharm the moons passing in front of the Sun . The NASA rover has done thisbefore , but these novel eclipse images , releasedby NASA yesterday , are among the best we ’ve seen to date .

The Phobos occultation was captured on March 26 , 2019 . The result is consider an annular eclipse because the moon does n’t completely obscure the disk of the Sun . The Deimos occultation happened on March 17 , 2019 . Technically speaking , it ’s not an occultation owing to the small size of it of the moon and how minuscule of the Sun is in reality being cover . This is more of a transit , similar to how removed exoplanets move across their master of ceremonies star , and are subsequently spotted from our vantage point on Earth .

The Martian moon Phobos crossing in front of the Sun.

The Martian moon Phobos crossing in front of the Sun.Gif: (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Gizmodo)

A third serial of images taken by Curiosity ’s Navcam shows the phantom of Phobos crossbreed the Sun on March 25 , 2019 , which temporarily dim the Martian daylight .

Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University , a co - tec with the Curiosity Mastcam project , said observations such as these are meliorate our understanding of where these Sun Myung Moon are located relative to Mars . Fifteen years ago , before the Spirit and Opportunity commission , the presumed locating of Deimos was off by 25 miles ( 40 km ) , agree to a NASA press release .

“ More observations over clip assist trap down the details of each orbital cavity , ” said Lemmon in the NASA passing . “ Those orbits deepen all the time in response to the gravitative pull of Mars , Jupiter or even each Martian moon take out on the other . ”

Gif:

Deimos passing in front of the Sun.Gif: (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Gizmodo)

These eclipses are important for scientific discipline , and they ’re undeniably awesome , but as Bad Astronomer Phil Plaitpointed outback in 2012 , they ’re actually quite vulgar .

Phobos orbits Mars pretty close in , just about 6000 km ( 3600 miles ) above the surface of Mars – compare that to the 400,000 kilometre distance from the Earth to the Moon ! Phobos is so close that it transits the Sun pretty much every 24-hour interval for some location on Mars , gain this something of a less - than - rare event .

Still , that does n’t take aside from how cool it is to see an eclipse from another populace through the eyes of an intrepid scouter .

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