PREVIEW

This incredible footage of what at first glance appears like a 'googly eye' is actually video of an eclipse on Mars. The red planet's tiny, potato-shaped moon Phobos, one of two Martian moons, cast a silhouette as it passed in front of the Sun, creating the eye in Mars' sky. From its perch on the western wall of Mars' Jezero Crater, NASA's Perseverance rover spied Phobos as the “googly eye” peering down from space. Captured by the rover's Mastcam-Z on Sept. 30, the 1,285th Martian day of Perseverance's mission, the event took place when the spud-like satellite passed directly between the Sun and a point on the surface of Mars, obscuring a large part of the Sun's disc. At the same time that Phobos appeared as a large black disc rapidly moving across the face of the Sun, its shadow, or antumbra, moved across the planet's surface. Roughly 157 times smaller in diameter than Earth's Moon, Phobos is only about 17 miles (27 kilometers) at its widest point.