Solar eclipse on Mars: Everything you need to know about the historic sighting

The camera of NASA's Perseverance rover (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), captured a solar eclipse on Mars. The moment when Phobos, one of the moons of the red planet, characterized by its potato shape, passed in front of the Sun has gone around the world.

According to the space agency, the images recorded by the Mastcam-Z camera are the result of the widest and most frame-rate observation of a solar eclipse ever taken on the surface of Mars.

The sighting, which lasted approximately 40 seconds, occurred on April 2, the 397th Martian day, or sun, of the mission. The duration was shorter than that of a typical solar eclipse between the Earth's Moon and the Astro Rey.

It should be noted that Phobos, the moon of Mars, is approximately 157 times smaller than the Earth's Moon. The other moon on Mars, Deimos, is even smaller.

These observations can help scientists better understand the moon's orbit and how its gravity attracts the Martian surface, ultimately shaping the crust and mantle of the red planet.

“The images are the latest in a long history of NASA spacecraft capturing solar eclipses on Mars. In 2004, NASA's twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity took the first time-lapse photographs of Phobos during a solar eclipse. Curiosity continued the trend with videos taken by its Mastcam camera system,” notes the space agency.

He recalled that Perseverance landed in February 2021 and in its short time has been able to send the most enlarged video of a Phobos solar eclipse so far, and with the highest frame rate in history.

NASA says the credit is also due to Perserverance's “next generation” Mastercam-Z camera, a zoom upgrade to Curiosity's Mastcam.

Rachel Howson of Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, one of the members of the Mastcam-Z team that operates the camera, said the results are exceeding her expectations.

Although Perseverance first sends low-resolution thumbnails, it offers a preview of what you're about to send. In that sense, when they received the images in high resolution, they were surprised at how good the result looked.

But it is not only the resolution, since in the images color has been a highlight, since the entire eclipse is distinguished. In part, it's because Mastcam-Z has a sunscreen that acts like sunglasses to reduce light intensity.

“You can see details in the shape of Phobos's shadow, such as ridges and bumps in the moon's landscape,” said Mark Lemmon, a planetary astronomer at the Institute of Space Science in Boulder, Colorado, who has orchestrated most of Phobos's observations from Mars. “You can also see sunspots. And it's great that you can see this eclipse exactly as the rover saw it from Mars.”

According to NASA scientists, “Phobos is doomed” to crash to the Martian surface, as they have detected that it is slowly approaching the planet, however, it is estimated that it will occur millions of years from now.

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