Transit of Mercury from Uranus

A transit of Mercury across the Sun as seen from Uranus takes place when the planet Mercury passes directly between the Sun and Uranus, obscuring a small part of the Sun's disc for an observer on Uranus. During a transit, Mercury can be seen from Uranus as a small black disc moving across the face of the Sun.

Naturally, no one has ever seen a transit of Mercury from Uranus, nor is this likely to happen in the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, the next one will take place on October 26, 2020.

A transit could be observed from the surface of one of Uranus' moons rather than from Uranus itself. The times and circumstances of the transits would naturally be slightly different.

The Mercury-Uranus synodic period is 88.221 days. It can be calculated using the formula 1/(1/P-1/Q), where P is the sidereal orbital period of Mercury (87.969 days) and Q is the orbital period of Uranus (30,799.095 days).

Transits of Mercury from Uranus are empirically observed to occur in clusters, with two such clusters every 40 years or so.

Transits of Mercury from Uranus (2001-2100)
October 26, 2020	January 23, 2021	April 21, 2021	July 18, 2021
October 14, 2021	January 10, 2022	April 8, 2022	July 5, 2022
October 1, 2022	December 29, 2022	March 27, 2023	June 23, 2023
September 19, 2023	December 16, 2023	March 13, 2024	May 20, 2061
August 17, 2061	November 13, 2061	February 9, 2062	May 9, 2062
August 5, 2062	November 1, 2062	January 29, 2063	April 27, 2063
July 25, 2063

See also

• Astronomical transit

External links

• JPL Horizons