Perseverance Rover: ‘Googly Eye’ solar eclipse seen from Mars

Science: NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover got to see a “googly eye” solar eclipse as the planet’s moon Phobos passed in front of the sun. Phobos, one of Mars’ two moons, and the even smaller Deimos, passed between the Red Planet and the sun on Sept. 30, the 1,285th Martian day of Perseverance’s mission. The rover, located on the western wall of Mars’ Jezero Crater at the time, captured the eclipse using its powerful Mastcam-Z camera system.

NASA recently shared a new video of footage taken by Perseverance, showing the tiny, potato-shaped moon passing in front of the sun’s disk. Phobos appeared as a dark black object in front of the sun’s warm glow, creating something resembling a “googly eye” (where Phobos is the pupil) in the sky above Mars. This isn’t the first time Perseverance has observed a solar eclipse from Mars. In fact, given that Phobos orbits the Red Planet once every 7.6 hours, this type of event is much more common on Mars than eclipses are on Earth.

“Because Phobos’s orbit is almost perfectly in line with the Martian equator and relatively close to the planet’s surface, transits of the moon occur on most days of the Martian year,” NASA officials said in a statement sharing the new Perseverance video footage.

Measuring just 17 miles (27 kilometers) at its widest point, Phobos is about 157 times smaller in diameter than Earth’s moon. Given its fast orbit, transits of Phobos typically last only 30 seconds or so. The video footage shared shows the eclipse in real time, as well as at a speed four times faster.