88

What's that passing in front of the Sun? It looks like a moon, but it can't be Earth's Moon, because it isn't round. It's the Martian moon Phobos. The featured video was taken from the surface of Mars in 2022 by the Perseverance rover. Phobos, at 11.5 kilometers across, is 150 times smaller than Luna (our moon) in diameter, but also 50 times closer to its parent planet. In fact, Phobos is so close to Mars that it is expected to break up and crash into Mars within the next 50 million years. In the near term, the low orbit of Phobos results in more rapid solar eclipses than seen from Earth. The featured video is shown in real time -- the transit really took about 40 seconds, as shown. The videographer -- the robotic rover Perseverance (Percy) -- continues to explore Jezero Crater on Mars, searching not only for clues to the watery history of the now dry world, but evidence of ancient microbial life.

Source

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 1 points 9 hours ago

Look at this garbage Eclipse. We're so lucky our Moon isn't trash

this post was submitted on 24 May 2026
88 points (97.8% liked)

Astronomy

6902 readers
123 users here now

A community for sharing astronomy-related news, content, research, photographs, etc.

When sharing photographs and articles, please make an effort to include source URLs.

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS