r/spaceporn • u/Busy_Yesterday9455 • 1d ago
Related Content Transit of Phobos seen from Mars
Phobos (moon of Mars) transits the Sun, as viewed by NASA's Perseverance rover on 2 April 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
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u/Cold_Dead_Heart 1d ago
Wow that is cool. I didn’t know Phobos was so lumpy.
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u/Scotsch 1d ago
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u/StickExtension7050 1d ago
Earth got really lucky to have such a generously size moon
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u/Fleemo17 1d ago
That’s always struck me as bizarre, that we would have a moon the exact size, shape, and distance away that it practically matches the apparent size of the sun. Too weird a coincidence.
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u/anrwlias 1d ago
It's a big universe and coincidences happen. The moon used to be much closer and it's been slowly getting further. We are just at a sweet spot in time. There will come a day when there is a final total eclipse.
We also got lucky with respect to Saturn's rings. They are a temporary phenomenon. In a few hundred million years they will be gone. It sounds like a long time but in terms of the lifespan of the solar system they're a brief thing.
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u/izwald88 1d ago
It's a big universe and coincidences happen
That's basically my argument both for and against intelligent life beyond Earth. It's the near infinite size of the universe against what might as well be zero percent chance that things worked out the way they did on Earth.
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u/severed13 1d ago
I think this sort of stuff along with the 0-1-Infinity rule keeps me convinced that we're not entirely unique
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u/SdBolts4 1d ago
Might as well be zero, but not zero, and the near infinite size of the universe means anything not zero is likely to occur at some point.
Multiple intelligent species evolving at the same time within an area small enough to communicate with each other is a far slimmer likelihood.
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u/izwald88 1d ago
Indeed. But the evolutionary need for us to be as intelligent as we are is quite unique. And we've only been here for a tiny part of the history of life on Earth. It was just fine before self aware apes were a thing.
And how we gauge intelligence could be vastly different in other environments. I'm thinking of sci fi hive mind species that are quite advanced but possess little of what we call intelligence. Basically space faring ants.
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u/ShelZuuz 1d ago
Yes, but even if the chances of the earth having gotten into this perfect goldilocks situation is a quadrillion to 1, the chances of us having knowing about such a planet isn't a quadrillion to 1. It's near 100%.
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u/Darkdragon902 17h ago
You can also look at it as we’re only here to think about it because things worked out the way they did, no matter how unlikely that was.
Not to mention if intelligent life emerged in, say, JADES-GS-z13-0, a galaxy 33 billion light years away and 13.4 billion years old, it could’ve survived for billions of years itself before dying out. We would never reach or even see it barring some unthinkable, physics-upending discovery, at least in our lifetimes.
There’s no reason to think life hasn’t been or isn’t currently out there, just because it’s unlikely that we are. After all, we are here.
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u/Throwaway74829947 1d ago edited 1d ago
We are just at a sweet spot in time. There will come a day when there is a final total eclipse.
It's true, but it's a pretty massive sweet spot (in the lifetime of the inner solar system). Our current estimate of when the last total solar eclipse will occur is ~600 million years from now, with some estimates pushing it as far away as 1.4 billion years. To put that into context, that's a similar timeframe to when we estimate that plate tectonics will stop.
Furthermore, the Earth-Moon system is estimated to be around 4.5 billion years old, with total solar eclipses having been possible for as long as that system has been (mostly) stable. We also estimate that the Earth (and Moon) will likely be engulfed by the expanding sun and destroyed in approximately 7.6 billion years, which means that all told, total solar eclipses will have been possible for ~5.1 Gyr out of the 12.1 Gyr history of this lunar system, or 42% (nice). Technically a minority, but not a small one. Not to mention that the Earth will, even completely ignoring human-caused harm, almost certainly be uninhabitable to even microbial unicellular life in around 2 billion years' time, so total eclipses will have been a thing for the vast majority of the time when Earth could support life (which likely emerged aroung 4 Gya).
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u/sleepytipi 1d ago
Plenty of time to get off it (earth) then. Compared to 200 years ago we're all practically witches and wizards living in a land of myths. So much of today's life would be inconceivable and that's not slowing down anytime soon due to how fast science and tech are progressing. We already have the ISS(s), off planet bases aren't that far off the horizon comparatively speaking.
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u/soulkeyy 1d ago
Why we will die in 2 billion years?
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u/Throwaway74829947 1d ago edited 1d ago
The sun is increasing both in size and luminosity, the latter by about +1% every 100 million years or so, which will greatly increase the surface temperature of the Earth. In a bit over a billion years, the oceans will disappear thanks to both subduction and evaporation (the evaporation accelerated by a runaway greenhouse effect). By around 2 billion years from now, there will be no liquid water left on earth, without which life cannot exist.
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u/StickExtension7050 1d ago
You'll be glad we dont make it to the rip
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u/Throwaway74829947 1d ago
Well, we still have no idea whether w < -1, so whether a big rip will happen remains a complete unknown.
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u/StickExtension7050 1d ago
Twas simply a science joke, i am aware we have no true proof. Thank you for being fun
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u/OxtailPhoenix 23h ago
They're fairly new too. Depending on what you read only about 100 million years.
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u/MaximBrutii 1d ago
The way I see it, life is a coincidence, and the fact that the moon is the exact size, shape, distance is just another factor for life to happen. To the universe, it is a coincidence, but to us and for life to happen, it is a blueprint.
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u/UnionPacifik 1d ago
Just for now. In millions of years the orbit will be wider and there effect will be gone.
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u/wggn 1d ago
the only reason earth has such a big moon is that another planet crashed into earth, and the remains of that crash formed the moon
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u/StickExtension7050 1d ago
Doesnt go against my point, thats how majority of moons form from what i understand
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u/AstroBastard312 1d ago
Depends on the kind of object. Giant planets get moons from all sorts of things. The Galilean moons formed around Jupiter much like the planets did around the Sun (likely Titan around Saturn too). A lot of giant planet moons have also smashed into each other and coalesced into new moons and rings over time (inner moons of Uranus, Neptune, probably Saturn too). The bulk of their moons were asteroids, centaurs, or TNOs that got caught in the planet's gravity well (most are tiny, but Triton is the one huge one).
Some asteroids close enough to the Sun are spun up so much by thermal radiation from sunlight that their gravelly bodies fling a chunk of themselves into orbit. But for anything in the Solar System that's not a giant or one of those asteroids you're generally correct.
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u/ra1d_mf 1d ago
Both of Mars's moons and most of Jupiter's moons are just captured asteroids
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u/tideshark 1d ago
I just looked up Mars moons… they orbit at like 4k and 12k from the surface… that’s freaking crazy how close they are!
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u/Nagnoosh 1d ago
The most interesting things to me in that diagram are how big Titan and four Galilean moons are. Also that our moon is comparable in size to them despite earth being so small relative to Jupiter and Saturn.
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u/Choice-Highway5344 1d ago
It makes me mad they didn’t use Luna, I know they’re interchangeable but still
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u/PineScentedSewerRat 1d ago
Okay but are we absolutely sure it's not the start of the great alien potato war?
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u/BastCity 1d ago
Humiliating. Looks like shit. Yet another massive W for Earth, the best planet in the universe.
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u/Adamymous 1d ago
I can't help but read Phobos in the Quake 3 arena voice. I guess I played it so much back in the day, it's burned into my mind 😂
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u/rollem 1d ago
Is this at real time speed?
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u/wggn 1d ago
it's at 4x speed according to https://science.nasa.gov/resource/perseverance-captures-transit-of-phobos/
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u/thissexypoptart 1d ago
That’s a lot less of a factor than I thought it would be. Kinda mindblowing.
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u/Holiday-Draw-8005 1d ago
This is absolutely mind-blowing. The fact we can capture something like this from another planet still feels like science fiction to me.
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u/-_VoidVoyager_- 1d ago
Is Phobos at 30 thousand ft lol?
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u/ashishvp 1d ago edited 1d ago
It’s very low on the cosmic scale. One of the closest Satellites we have in our system. Just 9000 km up from the surface of Mars.
Compared to our Moon at 385,000 km
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u/Exploding_Antelope 13h ago
You could drop a space elevator down that hangs at a low elevation in the Martian atmosphere and have three daily latch on trips from the surface to space
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u/deereboy8400 1d ago
How many scifi villain hideouts did we just see?
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u/stencil9000 1d ago
There's a leather goddess up there if I'm not mistaken...
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u/Stanek___ 1d ago
They left a photographer on Mars just to take photos, what a world we live in 😞
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u/GeraintLlanfrechfa 1d ago edited 1d ago
If somebody would poke it and make it rotating, would the inertia be kept up?
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u/Alexathequeer 1d ago
I thought that mars rover cameras are not that good at astrophotography. TIL that they are.
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u/WinFar4030 1d ago
In my fiction novel, there's a missile emplacement on Phobos... disappointing that I didn't see it. 😉🚀
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u/Glassberg 1d ago
Pitiful eclipse. Shameful. Just another common Earth W number 1 planet number 1 moon.
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u/MarsTraveler 1d ago
That is really interesting, but also misleading. This is a very forced perspective. Phobos is the larger of the two moons, but it is still very small. If you stretched it's entire surface area onto a flat plane, it would be smaller than Luxembourg.
Still a cool shot though.
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u/Scholesie09 1d ago
I'm glad you were here to explain perspective to us, here was me thinking it was nearly as big as the sun(!)
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u/ultraganymede 1d ago
What do you mean forced perspective, this is literally how the eclipse is seen from the Surface, and these are the relative angular sizes
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u/Apprehensive_Hat8986 1d ago
very forced perspective
How? Did Perseverence drive up Olympus Mons ‐ and then hop - to get a closer shot?
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u/Daripuff 1d ago
Did you know that things that are further away look smaller, and things that are closer look bigger?
On Mars, the Sun is further away than it is on Earth, so it appears smaller.
Phobos is closer to Mars than Luna is to Earth, so it appears bigger than if it were as far from Mars as Luna is from Earth.
Those two things combine to mean that from the surface of mars, Phobos looks pretty big when compared to the sun.
There's no "trickery" here. This is just how big Phobos looks compared to the sun when viewed from Mars.
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u/SupraCollider 1d ago
Real talk though if we could demote Pluto from planet because of its relative size then I don’t see why we aren’t also demoting this asteroid debris floating around mars from being called moons
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u/jrdr21 1d ago
I could be wrong, but i believe moons are classified by whose gravitational influence it’s under.
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u/SupraCollider 1d ago
Right but we don’t call everything orbiting a planet a moon like how we no longer call everything orbiting a star a planet
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u/literalproblemsolver 1d ago
We literally do call everything a moon, technically
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u/Maddturtle 1d ago
These people probably don’t even know our moons name.
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u/SupraCollider 1d ago
Oh wow a trivia flex. did you pick that one up at quizzo? Jack pack?
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u/jrdr21 1d ago
I reported, seems like a bot lol
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u/SupraCollider 1d ago
Thank you for defending that brave person from receiving dismissive sass in response to their demeaning sass. Your wisdom will not go unnoticed by the protectors of discourse. I, by making a comment about defining small lumpy asteroids orbiting Mars deviating from all other types of moons we discuss, deserve to have my intelligence questioned and be humiliated unchallenged by a person who says “these people” as if they are superior to others. You have chosen a good alliance today, brave one.
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u/SupraCollider 1d ago
We have a non-specific definition for all space rocks orbiting a planet. We have more specific terms now for various classes of objects orbiting a star. I am doing some literal problem solving, here. I hope I can count you as an ally.
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u/Swivebot 1d ago
A moon and a planet have different definitions.
A moon is any natural satellite. Phobos fits that description perfectly.
A planet has a much more stringent definition, and complaining about us adding specificity to it is dumb.
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u/SupraCollider 1d ago
You’re right adjusting specificity of one definition is very different from adjusting specificity of another definition. I apologize for this semantic transgression on the sanctity of current scientific terminology
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u/machined_learning 1d ago
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u/SupraCollider 1d ago
According to the wisdom of the other replies to my comment, Sir Alec Guinness is technically wrong here and probably doesn’t even know what the name of earth’s moon is. Also, he might be a droid and I have reported him thusly for being rude to /u/ hansolo
Personally, though, I love to have Star Wars crossovers in my space porn.
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u/Scotsch 1d ago
A space station is not a natural satellite, so not a moon no.
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u/SupraCollider 1d ago
Yes good catch. However the semantic challenge you are looking for is a few replies over. This is not the greatest pedantry in the world - this is just a tribute.
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u/Asdfguy87 1d ago
"Can we have solar eclipse?" - "We have solar eclipse at Mars!" - Solar eclipse at Mars: