Rare moment of lunar eclipse on Mars reveals strangely distorted moon

April 25, 2022 10:02 GMT+7

Perseverance captured the incredible video of Mars’ moon Phobos as it passed by the sun during the eclipse.

During the eclipse, Phobos casts its uneven shadow, resembling a distorted, round potato onto the Martian surface.

Rare moment of lunar eclipse on Mars reveals strangely distorted moon

Perseverance recorded the video during the journey to find evidence of life on the Red Planet when arriving in the river delta on the 45 km wide Jezero crater.

With a state-of-the-art Mastcam-Z camera, Perseverance captured the movement of the sun and moon with the greatest magnification and at the highest frame rate ever.

“I knew it was going to be fine, but I didn’t expect the video to be so great,” said Rachel Howson, one of the team members operating the Mastcam-Z camera.

The moon of Mars, Phobos, named after the Greek god of fear, is about 157 times smaller than Earth’s moon and is one of two natural satellites of Mars, of which Deimos is small in size. much more.

Scientists believe that the two moons were once moving asteroids that fell into the orbit of Mars due to the planet’s gravitational field. But their orbits are unstable and in the next few tens of millions of years Deimos will orbit into space and Phobos will crash into the Martian surface.

Researchers have been observing solar eclipses from the Martian surface since 2004. Two NASA rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have taken many of the first images of the moon’s movement.

When the Curiosity rover was operating on Mars in 2019, the same image was recorded. However, the previous images are not so detailed, just black and white photos. Meanwhile, Perserverance recorded the first and extremely detailed color image of a lunar eclipse on Mars.

“We see in detail the shape of Phobos, the moon’s ridges and protrusions,” said Mark Lemmon, an astronomer at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado. can see the eclipse exactly as Perserverance has seen from Mars.”

NASA observes solar eclipses not only for the sake of beautiful images. Observing Phobos’s path around Mars helps researchers gain more scientific understanding of the gravity between Mars and its moon, and provides more information about the planet’s interior, hydrodynamic Tidal forming crust, mantle.

Perserverance is a key part of NASA’s $2.7 billion Mars 2020 mission. The spacecraft is searching for signs of ancient life on the Martian surface by collecting dozens of rock samples sent back to Earth. Along with that is the Ingenuity helicopter that has made 25 flights to Mars.

Hoang Dung (synopsis)