Transit of Mercury from Jupiter
A transit of Mercury across the Sun as seen from Jupiter takes place when the planet Mercury passes directly between the Sun and Jupiter, obscuring a small part of the Sun's disc for an observer on Jupiter. During a transit, Mercury can be seen from Jupiter as a small black disc moving across the face of the Sun.
A transit could be observed from the surface of one of Jupiter's moons rather than from Jupiter itself. The times and circumstances of the transits would naturally be slightly different.
The Mercury-Jupiter synodic period is 89.792 days. It can be calculated using the formula 1/(1/P-1/Q), where P is the sidereal orbital period of Mercury (87.968435 days) and Q is the orbital period of Jupiter (4330.595 days).
The inclination of Mercury's orbit with respect to Jupiter's ecliptic is 6.29°, which is less than its value of 7.00° with respect to Earth's ecliptic.
Transits of Mercury from Jupiter occur in series, with a transit usually being followed by another after about 17,330 days (about 47.44 years). This is approximately equal to 4 orbits of Jupiter, 197 orbits of Mercury, or 193 synodic periods.
Because Mercury travels around the Sun much more quickly than Jupiter, it always has time to pass through the transit node by the time Jupiter moves away from the node and often has sufficient time to do so more than once. Thus, transits of Mercury occur in groups of one or more about every six years at every passage of Jupiter through the transit nodes.
| Transits of Mercury from Jupiter | ||
|---|---|---|
| February 9, 2000 | July 22, 2047 | January 1, 2095 |
| December 25, 2005 | June 6, 2053 | November 17, 2100 |
| March 26, 2006 | September 5, 2053 | February 15, 2101 |
| November 28, 2011 | May 10, 2059 | October 21, 2106 |
| February 26, 2012 | August 8, 2059 | January 18, 2107 |
| January 12, 2018 | June 23, 2065 | December 4, 2112 |
| September 17, 2023 | February 26, 2071 | August 9, 2118 |
| December 15, 2023 | May 27, 2071 | November 7, 2118 |
| October 31, 2029 | April 11, 2077 | September 22, 2124 |
| July 6, 2035 | December 16, 2082 | May 28, 2130 |
| October 3, 2035 | March 15, 2083 | August 26, 2130 |
| August 18, 2041 | January 28, 2089 | July 11, 2136 |
| November 17, 2041 | April 29, 2089 | October 9, 2136 |
References
- Albert Marth, Note on the Transit of the Planet Mars and its Satellites across the Sun’s disc, which will occur for the Planet Jupiter and its Satellites on April 13, 1886, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 46 (1886), 161–164. [1]
