Atransit of Mercury across the Sun as seen from Mars takes place when the planetMercury passes directly between theSun andMars, 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 roughly twice as common astransits of Mercury from Earth: there are several per decade.
The Mars roversSpirit andOpportunity could have observed the transit of January 12, 2005 (from 14:45UTC to 23:05 UTC); however the only camera available for this had insufficient resolution. They were able to observetransits 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 byJPL Horizons indicates thatOpportunity would have been able to observe the transit from the start until local sunset at about 19:23 UTC, whileSpirit could have observed it from local sunrise at about 19:38 UTC until the end of the transit. The roverCuriosity observed the Mercury transit of June 3, 2014, marking the first time any planetary transit has been observed from a celestial body besides Earth.[1]
March 5, 2024: NASA released images of transits of the moonDeimos, the moonPhobos and the planet Mercury as viewed by thePerseverance rover on the planet Mars.[2]
The Mercury-Marssynodic period is 100.888 days. It can be calculated using the formula 1/(1/P-1/Q), where P is theorbital period of Mercury (87.969 days) and Q is the orbital period of Mars (686.98 days).
Theinclination of Mercury's orbit with respect to that of Mars is 5.16°, which is less than its value of 7.00° with respect to Earth's ecliptic.
The simultaneous occurrence of a transit of Mercury and a transit of Venus is extremely rare, but somewhat more frequent than from Earth, and will next occur in the years18,713,19,536 and20,029.
On several occasions a related event is predicted: a transit of Mercury and a transit of Venus, ortransit of Earth, will follow themselves, one after the other, in an interval of only several hours.
On November 28, 3867, there will be a transit of Earth and Moon, and two days later there will be a transit of Mercury.On January 16, 18551, transits of Mercury and Venus will occur 14 hours apart.
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