Planetary transit

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Venus transit on June 8, 2004 at 10:19 am CEST - Venus completely on the solar disk

A planetary transit or planetary passage is called the pre-drawing a planet out from the sun of a given location. The passing planet appears as a black disk. Two conditions must be met for a round :

• The location and transit planets must be in lower conjunction ("in a row") with the sun ; that is, the two planets have the same ecliptical length .
• During the conjunction, the ecliptical latitude must be sufficiently small, otherwise the disk of the transit planet will pass above or below the solar disk. The geometrical considerations for this are considerably more complex.

Of the Earth as seen from two types of planetary transits are possible:

1. the transit of Mercury , 13-14 times per century
2. the Venus transit , twice in about 120 years

Except for the innermost planet Mercury, any planet can be the location planet of a planetary transit, e.g. B .:

1. Earth passage from Mars
2. Jupiter passage from Saturn, Neptune or Uranus

By observing the passages of Venus in 1761 and 1769 from different points on the earth, the distance between the earth and the sun could be determined. In addition, especially in the 18th and 19th centuries, there were repeated reports of transits of unknown celestial bodies in front of the sun, which were ascribed to a hypothetical intramerkurial planet that was given the name volcano .

The last Mercury transit observable from Europe took place on November 11, 2019 , and the last observable Venus transit on June 6, 2012. The passage through Mercury on November 8, 2006 was not visible from Europe.

See also

• Star occultation
• Solar eclipse
• Transit method

literature

• Arnold Hanslmeier : Introduction to Astronomy and Astrophysics 2nd Edition. Spectrum Academic Publishing House, 2007, ISBN 978-3-8274-1846-3 .

Web links

• John Walker: Quarter Million Year Canon of Solar System Transits (English)

Wiktionary: Planet transit  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Passages in our solar system
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
	moon	Deimos			Saturn	Saturn
		Phobos				Uranus