Seeing a solar eclipse is something that features on many people's bucket lists – and now NASA has gone one step further, revealing what the phenomenon looks like from Mars.
The space agency's Perseverance rover has captured stunning footage of Mars' potato-shaped moon Phobos crossing the face of the sun.
The rover, which has been on Mars since February 2021, captured the footage with its next-generation Mastcam-Z camera on April 2.
'I knew it was going to be good, but I didn't expect it to be this amazing,' said Rachel Howson of Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, one of the Mastcam-Z team members who operates the camera.
Phobos is the larger of Mars' two moons and is 17 x 14 x 11 miles (27 by 22 by 18 kilometres) in diameter.
It orbits Mars three times a day, and is so close to the planet's surface that in some locations on Mars it cannot always be seen.
The eclipse took place on Perseverance's 397th Martian day, and lasted a little over 40 seconds.
This is much shorter than a typical solar eclipse involving Earth's Moon, which is unsurprising, given Phobos is about 157 times smaller than Earth's Moon.
While previous rovers – including Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity – have snapped photos of solar eclipses from Mars, Perseverance's footage is the most-zoomed in video of a Phobos solar eclipse yet.
Perseverance's footage is also the first to show a Phobos solar eclipse in colour.
'You can see details in the shape of Phobos' shadow, like ridges and bumps on the moon's landscape,' said Mark Lemmon, a planetary astronomer with the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, who has orchestrated most of the Phobos observations by Mars rovers.
'You can also see sunspots. And it's cool that you can see this eclipse exactly as the rover saw it from Mars.'
