Earth Plays Hide and Seek with NASA's Perseverance Rover

NASA's Perseverance rover played a game of hide and seek with Earth.

Look at these pictures. The Mars rover took them as Earth moved behind one of Mars' moons, Phobos, on July 2. The rover is on the edge of a big hole called Jezero Crater.

The small dots in the pictures are not dust on your screen. They are Earth and a moon that looks like a potato. Earth starts as a bright spot and moves down, then disappears as Phobos moves in the other direction.

This is the first time we have seen Earth hide behind another world from another planet.

In one of the pictures, Earth and Phobos line up. This is called an occultation, when one thing blocks another from view.

An occultation is different from an eclipse. In an eclipse, one thing blocks another's light, but does not cover it completely. When a small thing moves in front of a big thing, it is called a transit.

Mark Lemmon planned the pictures and put them together. The whole thing happened in 40 seconds.

Phobos moves across the Martian sky three times a day, and Earth is visible for months. But to catch them together takes planning and luck.

Phobos is small, but it is close to Mars, so it looks big. From the rover's view, Earth is just a small light.

From where the rover is, Earth is just a tiny light. It was 195 million miles away when the pictures were taken.

Our planets just passed each other in space.

Topics: NASA

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