NASA’s Perseverance rover used its Mastcam-Z camera to capture a Martian solar eclipse
On 30 September, NASA’s Perseverance rover turned its camera towards the sky and photographed a solar eclipse from Mars, capturing the planet’s moon Phobos partially blocking the Sun’s disc. In the series of photographs, you can distinctly see the shape of Phobos, which resembles a lumpy potato.
Phobos, which is the larger of Mars i Mars’ two tiny moons, isn’t the s spherical like our own Moon, or many moons in our Solar System, for that matter, but rather irregular like an asteroid.
Measuring roughly 17 by 14 by 11 miles, Phobos orbits Mars at an exceptionally close distance of just 3,700 miles. By comparison, our Moon circles at an average distance of 238,855 miles from Earth. And Phobos is a fast mover, completing three orbits of Mars in a single day.