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Transit Of Mercury From MarsA transit of Mercury across the Sun as seen from Mars takes place when the planet Mercury passes directly between the Sun and Mars, obscuring a small part of the Sun's disc for an observer on Mars. During a transit, Mercury can be seen from Mars as a small black disc moving across the face of the Sun. Transits of Mercury from Mars are much more common than transits of Mercury from Earth: there are several per decade. Naturally, no one has ever seen a transit of Mercury from Mars, but they could be observed by hypothetical future Mars colonists. In theory, the Mars Rovers Spirit and Opportunity might be able to observe the transit on January 12 2005 (from 14:45 UTC to 23:05 UTC) if they are still functional at that time; however the only camera available for this has insufficient resolution. They were able to observe transits of Deimos across the Sun, but at 2' angular diameter, Deimos is about 20 times larger than Mercury's 6.1" angular diameter. Ephemeris data generated by JPL Horizons indicates that Opportunity would be able to observe the transit from the start until local sunset at about 19:23 UTC Earth time, while Spirit would be able to observe it from local sunrise at about 19:38 UTC Earth time until the end of the transit. The Mercury-Mars synodic period is 100.8882 days. It can be calculated using the formula 1/(1/P-1/Q), where P is the orbital period of Mercury (87.969 days) and Q is the orbital period of Mars (686.98 days). The inclination of Mercury's orbit with respect to Mars' ecliptic is 5.16°, which is less than its value of 7.00° with respect to Earth's ecliptic. See also References External links
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