Solar eclipses on Mars Solar eclipses on Mars The two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, are much smaller than the Moon, greatly reducing the frequency of solar eclipses on that planet. Neither moon's apparent diameter is large enough to cover the disk of the sun, and therefore they are annular solar eclipses and can also be considered transits. Due to the small size of Phobos (about ) and its rapid orbital motion, an observer on the surface of Mars would never experience a solar eclipse for longer than about thirty seconds. Phobos also takes only 7 hours 39 minutes to orbit Mars, while
Phobos (moon) who studied Phobos and people and places from Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels". A number of craters have been named, and are listed in the following table. There is one named regio, "Laputa Regio", and one named planitia, "Lagado Planitia"; both are named after places in "Gulliver's Travels" (the fictional Laputa, a flying island, and Lagado, imaginary capital of the fictional nation Balnibarbi). The only named ridge on Phobos is "Kepler Dorsum", named after the astronomer Johannes Kepler. The orbital motion of Phobos has been intensively studied, making it "the best studied natural satellite in the Solar System" in terms of