NASA’s Perseverance spacecraft captured a solar eclipse when the red planet’s moon Phobos intersected with the sun, blocking part of the solar disk.
Space amateurs spotted the eclipse in preliminary images taken by the rover on Nov. 18.
Planetary scientist Paul Byrne posted the scene on his Twitter account, commenting: “This is a partial eclipse of the sun as seen from the surface of Mars on Friday.”
Image processor Kevin Gill has pieced the footage together into a short video that shows Phobos moving in front of the sun, giving us humans on Earth a good view of what the eclipse will look like from the surface of Mars.
Phobos is known as the closest moon to Mars, of the two moons that orbit the red planet. The other moon is called Deimos.
The surface of Phobos is marked by craters and grooves and is 17 miles (27 kilometers) wide at its widest point. And the moon orbits Mars in a relationship that will likely lead to its destruction someday millions of years from now.
The Perseverance spacecraft captured the eclipse as it circled through Jezero crater, a fascinating area with a watery history.
The rover is collecting rock samples from the area, looking for evidence of ancient microbial life and studying the landscape.
