Solar Eclipse on Mars
The Curiosity rover captured Mars’ moon Phobos as it traveled in front of the sun on August 20, 2013. The sequence above is taken from photos snapped three seconds apart and spliced into video form.
This sort of eclipse, where the nearer body doesn’t quite cover the sun, is called an annular eclipse, after the Latin word for “ring-shaped”.
These sort of annular astronomical coincidences happen on Earth, too, since our distance from the moon changes throughout each body’s elliptical orbit. Beautiful stuff:
Curiosity is becoming quite the skywatcher. Last month it aimed its camera up and captured Mars’ two moons in one shot!
