this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2024
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One of the Martian moons travels between the rover and the sun. It's a bit different to my usual posts, and not my OC :).

I believe it's Phobos, so there might be doom music kicking in any second now...

Source: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/raw-images/ZL7_1056_0760664099_781EBY_N0501254ZCAM01538_1100LMJ

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[–] sanguinepar 77 points 8 months ago (3 children)

A space being rolls its eyes:

[–] RGB3x3 32 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Glorious.

All hail Space Cookie Monster

[–] homesweethomeMrL 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Absolutely first thought. Thanks for confirming, Internet cousin!

[–] spez_ -1 points 8 months ago
[–] sanguinepar 2 points 8 months ago

Ah, THAT's who it reminded me of, I couldn't think at the time :-)

[–] AnAustralianPhotographer 20 points 8 months ago (1 children)

This inspired me to do some photoshopping.

[–] sanguinepar 4 points 8 months ago

Nice! I was going to do something like that, but I was in a rush. And also lazy.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

My doggo is in the hospital and this put a real smile on my face, thank you!

[–] sanguinepar 2 points 8 months ago

Oh no, poor doggo! All the best for his/her recovery :-)

[–] [email protected] 31 points 8 months ago (3 children)

That's a very curious shape for a moon.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It's technically just a random rock plucked from the asteroid belt. It's just not big enough to crush itself into a neat ball with gravity, like with planets or our Moon

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

That's why I like the picture. Technically just a random rock, just like earth. :)

[–] Steveanonymous 25 points 8 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

All hail the celestial potato!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

That's a fried egg!

[–] gibmiser 11 points 8 months ago

For real that's one Funky moon

[–] [email protected] 25 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

That means someone at NASA made an effort to search for eclipse events on Mars visible by Perseverance and put the right wheels inside the organisation in motion so that they made the rover make a photo of the sun (and deimos). Nice.

[–] overzeetop 10 points 8 months ago

Very likely. Lots of super geeks on staff.

But it's also possible some astroenthusiast did the math and emailed it to NASA, and whoever got that endo thought it would be cool and passed it to someone who could schedule the instrument. If you think about your geekiest friend and how they’d react if you sent them something truly unique about their geekdom that they could act on - well, that’s pretty much how every engr/scientist at NASA would react.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Is that radiation causing those awesome 70s colour spots

[–] Chainweasel 24 points 8 months ago (1 children)

More or less, those are dead pixels that have been killed by radiation over time. The same thing happens to cameras on the ISS.

[–] derphurr 1 points 8 months ago

Well why would they not remove dead pixels after they download photos? If it is always the same pixel why aren't they simply processed out and replaced with avg of neighbors? If it is radiation noise then they would need a few photos.

[–] BenadrylChunderHatch 19 points 8 months ago

Doom (1993) took place on both moons FYI. Episode 1 was Phobos and episode 2 was Deimos.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago

Here's a sweet video of a similar event in 2022, also taken by Perseverance. The article has some cool details.

https://mars.nasa.gov/news/9172/nasas-perseverance-rover-captures-video-of-solar-eclipse-on-mars/

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

THATS NO MOON ETC.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

This must clearly be the first time we've seen such an event on another planet, right?

[–] XeroxCool 7 points 8 months ago

Mars is the first planet, as far as I know, but this isn't the first transit we saw

[–] JustZ 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

What are the little red and green and blue dots? Just noise?

[–] AnAustralianPhotographer 1 points 8 months ago

I don't know, but one of the other comments said they're dead pixels, a part of the camera has failed over time.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

broke as hell martians can’t even afford a full eclipse 🌚

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

About what?

[–] Thcdenton 1 points 8 months ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

The picture kinda reminds me of Mimas.