Perseverance watches moonrise on Mars | Space photo of the day for May 16, 2025

NASA’s Perseverance rover captured this pre-dawn view of Mars’ moon Deimos hanging over a dimly-lit Martian vista.

What is it?

Unlike Earth’s moon, which is roughly one-fourth the planet’s size, Deimos is less than 1/500th the size of Mars. That means when seen in the night sky — as spotted here at 4:27 a.m. local time on March 1, 2025, the 1,433rd Martian day, or sol, of Perseverance’s mission — it appears more like a star than it does a celestial body.

Deimos measures only 7.8 miles (12.6 kilometers) across.

Where is it?

Deimos completes one orbit around Mars every 30 hours and 17 minutes at an average distance of 14,576 miles (23,458 kilometers) from the Martian surface.

At the time this photo was taken, the Perseverance rover was making its way to a location called “Witch Hazel Hill.”

Another feature, “Woodstock Crater,” at center right, is roughly a half-mile (750 meters) away from the rover.

Why is it amazing?

This vista is the product of 16 individual shots, which Perseverance assembled into a single photo that it then transmitted to Earth.

In the dark before dawn, the rover’s left navigation camera needed to use its maximum long-exposure time of 3.28 seconds for each of the 16 snaps. In total, the image represents an exposure time of about 52 seconds.

The image is hazy because the low light and long exposures can add digital noise to Perseverance’s images. Many of the white specks in the sky are likely noise, with others the effects of cosmic rays. Two of the brighter white specks are Regulus and Algieba, stars that are part of the constellation Leo.

Want to know more?

You can read more about Deimos and NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover.

You can also read about another sight in the Martian sky, as Perseverance has become the first spacecraft to spot auroras from the surface of another world.