Similar to Earth, Mars experiences moments when its moons cast shadows on its surface, but the eclipses on Mars, captured by NASA’s Opportunity, Curiosity, and Perseverance spacecraft, are completely different from those on Earth, where the two moons of Mars orbit. Phobos and Deimos orbit Mars every 7.65 and 30.35 hours, respectively.
Astronomers point out that these events are not eclipses as we witness on Earth, but rather a transit that does not completely block the sunlight.
Phobos has a larger silhouette than the one now observed on the Moon, blocking up to 40% of sunlight, even when completely swallowed up by the glare, while Deimos, farther away and much smaller than the former, blocks much less light.
But during a total solar eclipse on Earth, the Moon’s disk covers the Sun’s disk perfectly, even though the Moon is much smaller. This is because the Moon is about 400 times smaller than the Sun. It is also about 400 times closer to Earth than the Sun, which means that the Sun and Moon appear about the same size in our sky.
