Solar Eclipse on Mars: All there is to know about historical vision

The rover perseverance camera Container (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), a solar eclipse in Mars. the moment that Phobosone of the red planet’s characteristic potato-shaped moons, passed in front of the sun and circled the globe.

According to the space agency, the photos Recorded by Mastcam-Z Camera, It is the result of the largest and highest rate of observation of a solar eclipse ever seen on the surface of Mars.

see it lasted about 40 seconds, It happened on April 2, Sol 397 or the mission’s Sol day. The duration was less than the duration of a typical solar eclipse between the moon and the moon ground And the star king.

It should be noted that Phobos, the moon of Mars, It is about 157 times smaller than the Earth’s moon. Mars’ other moon, Deimos, is even smaller.

These observations can help scientists A better understanding of the moon’s orbit and how its gravity pulls on the surface of Marswhich finally It forms the crust and mantle of the red planet.

These images are the latest in a long history of a NASA spacecraft that captured a solar eclipse on Mars. In 2004, NASA’s twin spacecraft Spirit and Opportunity took the first photographs of Phobos during a solar eclipse. Curiosity continued the trend with videos captured by the Mastcam camera system.

I remembered that Perseverance arrived in February 2021 And in a short time it was able to send the most enlarged video of Phobos’ solar eclipse to date, with the highest frame rate in history.

NASA says credit also goes to Perserverance’s “next-generation” Mastercam-Z, a zoomable upgrade to Curiosity’s Mastcam.

Rachel Howson from Malin space science systems In San Diego, a member of the Mastcam-Z team operating the camera noticed it The results exceeded their expectations.

Although persistence first sends low-resolution thumbnails, it provides a preview of what it’s about to send. In this sense, when they received the high-resolution images they were Amazed at how good the result looked.

But it’s not just the resolution, the color was prominent in the images, where the entire eclipse was highlighted. in part because of Mastcam-Z has a solar filter that works like sunglasses to reduce the intensity of the light.

“You can see the details in the form of Phobos’ shadow, like the ridges and bulges on the moon’s surface,” said Mark Lemon, a planetary astronomer at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, who organized most of the moon’s observations. From Mars. “also Can you see sunspots. And it’s great to be able to see this eclipse just as the probe saw it from Mars.”

According to NASA scientists, Phobos is doomed to collapse on MarsSince they discovered that it is slowly approaching the planet, it is estimated that it will happen within millions of years.

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