Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, which are both significantly smaller than Earth's Moon. When directly overhead, Phobos appears about one-third the size of our full Moon, while Deimos looks about one-twelfth the size, appearing merely as a dot when passing the sun.
Neither moon is large enough to fully cover the sun, so all eclipses on Mars are annular eclipses, where the sun appears as a ring of light around the dark moon. These events are also known as transits.
Perseverance last observed a transit of Phobos on November 25th, 2022 (Sol 628) and a transit of Deimos on December 4th, 2022 (Sol 637) using its Mastcam-Z instrument, atop its Remote Sensing Mast. Just as our eyes require protection to view an eclipse, Mastcam-Z does too.
It's equipped with Neutral Density Filters, which function in a similar way to eclipse glasses and allow only 0.0001% of light to reach the left camera and 0.001% of light to reach the right camera. In fact, Mastcam-Z's ND filters surpass the protection of standard eclipse glasses on Earth, which should allow no more than 0.0032% of light to pass through.
As people on Earth turn their eyes to the eclipse, Perseverance remains focused on exploring Mars. Following a set of drives, Perseverance arrived at a location called Turquoise Bay on October 3rd, 2023 (Sol 932).
The rover then commenced a series of proximity science and remote science observations, including an abrasion of a rock target dubbed Bills Bay on October 6th, 2023 (Sol 935). The team is eagerly looking forward to continuing Perseverance's journey to Jurabi Point in the upcoming weeks.
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