Transit of Mars from Jupiter
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A transit of Mars across the Sun as seen from Jupiter takes place when the planet Mars passes directly between the Sun and Jupiter, obscuring a small part of the Sun's disc for an observer on Jupiter.
During a transit, Mars can be seen from Jupiter as a small black disc moving across the face of the Sun. No one has ever seen a transit of Mars from Jupiter, nor is this likely to happen in any foreseeable future. The next one will take place on July 7, 2040.
Contents |
[edit] Explanation
A transit could hypothetically 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. Mars's satellites Phobos and Deimos would theoretically be visible at the same time. However, the angular diameter of Phobos would be about 0.01" and Deimos would be less than 0.005", and their maximum separation from Mars would be roughly 3" and 9" respectively, making them very hard to see indeed.
The Mars-Jupiter synodic period is 816.51 days. It can be calculated using the formula 1/(1/P-1/Q), where P is the orbital period of Mars (686.98 days) and Q is the orbital period of Jupiter (4330.595 days). The inclination of Mars's orbit with respect to Jupiter's ecliptic is 1.44°, which is less than its value of 1.85° with respect to Earth's ecliptic.
[edit] Empirical observations
From empirical observations of transit dates, it appears that transits sometimes repeat after 13062.8 days (about 35 years and 9 months). This corresponds to 15.998 Mars-Jupiter synodic periods, or 19.01 Mars orbital periods, or 3.01 Jupiter orbital periods. However, in many cases, the transit does not repeat because the second event is a near-miss instead.
[edit] Images
Note: the images linked to in the following table do NOT take into account the finite speed of light. The distance of Mars from Jupiter at inferior conjunction is approximately 3.8 AU, which would correspond to about 30 light-minutes. It can take up to 16 hours for Mars to transit across the Sun at its widest point, thus the images correspond fairly closely to what would actually be seen by an observer on Jupiter.
The images correspond to a hypothetical observer at the center of Jupiter. Since Jupiter has a very large radius, the parallax of Mars between Jupiter's center and its north or south pole would be about 27", which is about 10 times Mars's apparent angular diameter, or about 1/15 of the Sun's angular diameter (about 6.5'). Therefore, some extremely close near-misses might be seen as grazing transits at Jupiter's poles.
Near misses are indicated with strikeout.
| Transits of Mars from Jupiter | |
|---|---|
| July 30, 1613 | [1] |
| May 19, 1631 | [2] |
| January 18, 1732 | [3] |
| November 7, 1749 | [4] |
| October 24, 1767 | [5] |
| August 12, 1785 | [6] |
| April 13, 1886 | [7] |
| February 3, 1904 | [8] |
| January 18, 1922 | [9] |
| November 8, 1939 | [10] |
| [11] | |
| July 7, 2040 | [12] |
| April 28, 2058 | [13] |
| [14] | |
| January 31, 2094 | [15] |
| December 26, 2158 | [16] |
| [17] | |
| October 1, 2194 | [18] |
| July 24, 2212 | [19] |
| [20] | |
| March 22, 2313 | [21] |
| January 14, 2331 | [22] |
| December 26, 2348 | [23] |
| October 18, 2366 | [24] |
| June 15, 2467 | [25] |
[edit] See also
| Transit visibility from planets superior to the transiting body | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Venus | Earth | Mars | Jupiter | Saturn | Uranus | Neptune |
| Mercury | Mercury | Mercury | Mercury | Mercury | Mercury | Mercury |
| Venus | Venus | Venus | Venus | Venus | Venus | |
| Earth | Earth | Earth | Earth | Earth | ||
| Mars | Mars | Mars | Mars | |||
| Jupiter | Jupiter | Jupiter | ||||
| Saturn | Saturn | |||||
| Uranus | ||||||
[edit] References
- Albert Marth, Note on the Transit of the Earth and Moon across the Sun’s Disk as seen from Mars on November 12, 1879, and on some kindred Phenomena, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 39 (1879), 513–514. [26]
- 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. [27]
