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.

ee also

* Astronomical transit

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. [http://adsbit.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?1886MNRAS..46..161M]