An Annular Eclipse on Mars

Sky and Telescope ^ | September 2, 2013 | Kelly Beatty

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

The Curiosity rover has captured the Martian moon Phobos passing directly in front of the Sun.

Earth isn't the only place that has eclipses — they can occur on every other moon-encircled planet in the Sun's family. The shadows of the Galilean moons frequently cross the face of Jupiter. Less frequently, Titan's shadow can be seen on Saturn's disk. Uranus, Neptune, and yes even Pluto can experience a total eclipse of the Sun.

But not Mars. Its two moons, Phobos and Deimos, are too small to block the Sun entirely. Just to reinforce this fact, on August 17th mission scientists commanded Curiosity's Mast Camera to pause from recording the Martian landscape and instead look up. High in the planet's peach-hued sky, the angular silhouette of Phobos slipped directly across the Sun's face.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

An annular eclipse of the Sun, witnessed by the rover Curiosity on August 17, 2013, reveals the irregular silhouette of the small Martian moon Phobos. From beginning to end, the event lasted just 30 seconds.

NASA / JPL / MSSS

[RadiationRomeo]

That’s Phobos, the bigger moon. I wonder how Deimos would look in transit.

We had a discussion a few years ago here about the escape velocity for Deimos. We calculated that you couldn’t jump off the moon, you couldn’t throw a football to Mars, but you could hit a golf ball that would go into space, IIRC.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

http://www.space.com/22392-curiosity-sees-martian-moon-s-phobos-and-deimos-time-lapse-video.html

[nothingnew]

pingo

FMCDH(BITS)

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks for the ping, nn, there’s been another one about this cool thing, but this is also going out to the APoD members.

[left that other site]

Thanks!
That picture was a life saver.