Transit of Mars from Saturn
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A transit of Mars across the Sun as seen from Saturn takes place when the planet Mars passes directly between the Sun and Saturn, obscuring a small part of the Sun's disc for an observer on Saturn. During a transit, Mars can be seen from Saturn as a small black disc moving across the face of the Sun.
Naturally, no one has ever seen a transit of Mars from Saturn, nor is this likely to happen in any foreseeable future. Nevertheless, the next one will take place on May 17 2008.
A transit could hypothetically be observed from the surface of one of Saturn's moons rather than from Saturn itself. The times and circumstances of the transits would naturally be slightly different.
The Mars-Saturn synodic period is 733.893 days. It can be calculated using the formula 1/(1/P-1/Q), where P is the sidereal orbital period of Mars (686.98 days) and Q is the orbital period of Saturn (10746.940 days).
Coincidentally, this is only about 3 days more than a calendar year on Earth. Interestingly, transits are empirically observed to occur in pairs exactly 16 Earth years apart, usually to the day.
The inclination of Mars's orbit with respect to Saturn's ecliptic is 2.36°, which is greater than its value of 1.85° with respect to Earth's ecliptic.
Note: the images linked to in the following table do NOT take into account the finite speed of light. The distance of Mars from Saturn at inferior conjunction is approximately 8.0 AU or about 66 light-minutes. It can take up to 10 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 Saturn.
The images correspond to a hypothetical observer at the center of Saturn. Since Saturn has a large radius, the parallax of Mars between Saturn's center and its north or south pole would be about 10.4", which is about 8.5 times Mars's apparent angular diameter of 1.2", or about 4.5% of the Sun's angular diameter (about 3.5'). Therefore, some extremely close near-misses might be seen as grazing transits at Saturn's poles.
Near misses are indicated with strikeout.
| Transits of Mars from Saturn | |
|---|---|
| | [1] (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=4&vbody=6&month=6&day=26¢ury=16&decade=1&year=2&hour=18&minute=0&fovmul=1&rfov=0.25&bfov=0.25&porbs=1) |
| | [2] (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=4&vbody=6&month=8&day=19¢ury=16&decade=4&year=0&hour=4&minute=0&fovmul=1&rfov=0.25&bfov=0.25&porbs=1) |
| | [3] (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=4&vbody=6&month=10&day=5¢ury=16&decade=5&year=4&hour=21&minute=0&fovmul=1&rfov=0.25&bfov=0.25&porbs=1) |
| October 5 1670 | [4] (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=4&vbody=6&month=10&day=5¢ury=16&decade=7&year=0&hour=6&minute=0&fovmul=1&rfov=0.25&bfov=0.25&porbs=1) |
| | [5] (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=4&vbody=6&month=11&day=28¢ury=16&decade=8&year=4&hour=0&minute=0&fovmul=1&rfov=0.25&bfov=0.25&porbs=1) |
| | [6] (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=4&vbody=6&month=1&day=13¢ury=17&decade=2&year=9&hour=22&minute=0&fovmul=1&rfov=0.25&bfov=0.25&porbs=1) |
| March 2 1743 | [7] (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=4&vbody=6&month=3&day=2¢ury=17&decade=4&year=3&hour=13&minute=0&fovmul=1&rfov=0.25&bfov=0.25&porbs=1) |
| March 2 1759 | [8] (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=4&vbody=6&month=3&day=2¢ury=17&decade=5&year=9&hour=1&minute=0&fovmul=1&rfov=0.25&bfov=0.25&porbs=1) |
| | [9] (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=4&vbody=6&month=6&day=10¢ury=18&decade=1&year=7&hour=18&minute=0&fovmul=1&rfov=0.25&bfov=0.25&porbs=1) |
| July 28 1831 | [10] (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=4&vbody=6&month=7&day=28¢ury=18&decade=3&year=1&hour=4&minute=0&fovmul=1&rfov=0.25&bfov=0.25&porbs=1) |
| July 27 1847 | [11] (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=4&vbody=6&month=7&day=27¢ury=18&decade=4&year=7&hour=20&minute=0&fovmul=1&rfov=0.25&bfov=0.25&porbs=1) |
| | [12] (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=4&vbody=6&month=11&day=5¢ury=19&decade=0&year=5&hour=14&minute=0&fovmul=1&rfov=0.25&bfov=0.25&porbs=1) |
| December 22 1919 | [13] (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=4&vbody=6&month=12&day=22¢ury=19&decade=1&year=9&hour=19&minute=0&fovmul=1&rfov=0.25&bfov=0.25&porbs=1) |
| December 22 1935 | [14] (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=4&vbody=6&month=12&day=22¢ury=19&decade=3&year=5&hour=16&minute=0&fovmul=1&rfov=0.25&bfov=0.25&porbs=1) |
| | [15] (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=4&vbody=6&month=4&day=1¢ury=19&decade=9&year=4&hour=14&minute=0&fovmul=1&rfov=0.25&bfov=0.25&porbs=1) |
| May 17 2008 | [16] (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=4&vbody=6&month=5&day=17¢ury=20&decade=0&year=8&hour=6&minute=0&fovmul=1&rfov=0.25&bfov=0.25&porbs=1) |
| May 17 2024 | [17] (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=4&vbody=6&month=5&day=17¢ury=20&decade=2&year=4&hour=12&minute=0&fovmul=1&rfov=0.25&bfov=0.25&porbs=1) |
| August 26 2082 | [18] (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=4&vbody=6&month=8&day=26¢ury=20&decade=8&year=2&hour=5&minute=0&fovmul=1&rfov=0.25&bfov=0.25&porbs=1) |
| October 11 2096 | [19] (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=4&vbody=6&month=10&day=11¢ury=20&decade=9&year=6&hour=2&minute=0&fovmul=1&rfov=0.25&bfov=0.25&porbs=1) |
| | [20] (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=4&vbody=6&month=10&day=12¢ury=21&decade=1&year=2&hour=8&minute=0&fovmul=1&rfov=0.25&bfov=0.25&porbs=1) |
| January 21 2171 | [21] (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=4&vbody=6&month=1&day=21¢ury=21&decade=7&year=1&hour=1&minute=0&fovmul=1&rfov=0.25&bfov=0.25&porbs=1) |
| March 7 2185 | [22] (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=4&vbody=6&month=3&day=7¢ury=21&decade=8&year=5&hour=19&minute=0&fovmul=1&rfov=0.25&bfov=0.25&porbs=1) |
| <s>March 9 2201 | [23] (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=4&vbody=6&month=3&day=9¢ury=22&decade=0&year=1&hour=2&minute=0&fovmul=1&rfov=0.25&bfov=0.25&porbs=1) |
| June 17 2259 | [24] (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=4&vbody=6&month=6&day=17¢ury=22&decade=5&year=9&hour=21&minute=0&fovmul=1&rfov=0.25&bfov=0.25&porbs=1) |
| August 2 2273 | [25] (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=4&vbody=6&month=8&day=2¢ury=22&decade=7&year=3&hour=10&minute=0&fovmul=1&rfov=0.25&bfov=0.25&porbs=1) |
| | [26] (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=4&vbody=6&month=8&day=2¢ury=22&decade=8&year=9&hour=22&minute=0&fovmul=1&rfov=0.25&bfov=0.25&porbs=1) |
| November 12 2347 | [27] (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=4&vbody=6&month=11&day=12¢ury=23&decade=4&year=7&hour=16&minute=0&fovmul=1&rfov=0.25&bfov=0.25&porbs=1) |
| December 28 2361 | [28] (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=4&vbody=6&month=12&day=28¢ury=23&decade=6&year=1&hour=1&minute=0&fovmul=1&rfov=0.25&bfov=0.25&porbs=1) |
| | [29] (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=4&vbody=6&month=12&day=28¢ury=23&decade=7&year=7&hour=19&minute=0&fovmul=1&rfov=0.25&bfov=0.25&porbs=1) |
| | [30] (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=4&vbody=6&month=2&day=20¢ury=24&decade=0&year=6&hour=14&minute=0&fovmul=1&rfov=0.25&bfov=0.25&porbs=1) |
| | [31] (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=4&vbody=6&month=3&day=29¢ury=24&decade=2&year=0&hour=15&minute=0&fovmul=1&rfov=0.25&bfov=0.25&porbs=1) |
| April 7 2436 | [32] (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=4&vbody=6&month=4&day=7¢ury=24&decade=3&year=6&hour=12&minute=0&fovmul=1&rfov=0.25&bfov=0.25&porbs=1) |
| May 23 2450 | [33] (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=4&vbody=6&month=5&day=23¢ury=24&decade=5&year=0&hour=17&minute=0&fovmul=1&rfov=0.25&bfov=0.25&porbs=1) |
| | [34] (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=4&vbody=6&month=5&day=24¢ury=24&decade=6&year=6&hour=14&minute=0&fovmul=1&rfov=0.25&bfov=0.25&porbs=1) |
See also
Template:Transit visibility table
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. [35] (http://adsbit.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?1879MNRAS..39..513M)
External links
- JPL Solar System Simulator (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/)