Deimos transits the Sun, as viewed by the Mars Opportunity rover on 4 March 2004.Deimos transit on 20 January 2024, as captured by the Mars rover Perseverance on sol 1037 of its mission.
A transit of Deimos across the Sun as seen from Mars occurs when Deimos passes directly between the Sun and a point on the surface of Mars, obscuring a small part of the Sun's disc for an observer on Mars. During a transit, Deimos can be seen from Mars as a small dark spot rapidly moving across the Sun's face.[1][2]
The event could also be referred to as a partial eclipse of the Sun by Deimos. However, since the angular diameter of Deimos is only about 1/10 of the angular diameter of the Sun as seen from Mars, it is more natural to refer to it as a transit. The angular diameter of Deimos is only 2½ times the angular diameter of Venus as seen from Earth during a transit of Venus from Earth.
Transit
A transit of Deimos from Mars lasts a maximum of about two minutes, due to its relatively rapid orbital period of about 30.3 hours.
Because they orbit Mars in low-inclination equatorial orbits, the shadows of Phobos or Deimos projected onto the surface of Mars exhibit a seasonal variation in latitude. At any given geographical location on the surface of Mars, there are two intervals in a Martian year when the shadows of Phobos or Deimos are passing through its latitude. During each such interval, no or one transit of Deimos can be seen by observers at that geographical location (compared to about half a dozen transits of Phobos).
The shadow always falls on the "winter hemisphere", except when it crosses the equator during the March and September equinoxes. Thus transits of Deimos happen during Martian autumn and winter in the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere, roughly symmetrically around the winter solstice. Close to the equator they happen around the March and September equinoxes; farther from the equator they happen closer to the winter solstice.
Because it orbits relatively close to Mars, Deimos cannot be seen north of 82.7°N or south of 82.7°S; such latitudes will obviously not see transits either.
On 4 March 2004, a transit was photographed by Mars Rover Opportunity, while on 13 March 2004, a transit was photographed by Mars Rover Spirit. In the captions below, the first row shows Earth time UTC and the second row shows Martian local solar time.
The data in the tables below is generated using JPL Horizons. There is some discrepancy of a minute or two with the times reported for the series of images above. This may be due to imprecision in the ephemeris data used by JPL Horizons; also the JPL Horizons data gives local apparent solar time while the times reported above are probably some form of mean solar time (and therefore some of the discrepancy would be due to the Martian equivalent of the equation of time).
Note: the data below is valid for the original landing sites. To the extent that the rovers have moved around on the surface, the parameters of the transits as actually observed may be slightly different.
Near misses are in italics.
Transits of Deimos from the Mars Spirit rover landing site
March 5, 2024: NASA released images of transits of the moon Deimos, the moon Phobos and the planet Mercury as viewed by the Perseverance rover on the planet Mars.
Transits viewed from Mars by the Perseverance rover
A transit lightcurve of Deimos was obtained[3] in 2020 using the solar array currents measured by the InSight lander. The light drop was about 0.9% (possibly less than the predicted geometric obstruction of 1% due to light scattering by atmospheric dust outside the shadow). The transit lasted between 116 and 124 seconds.
^Text by Daniel W. E. Green (editor) reads: "TRANSITS OF MARS I AND II
J. Bell, Cornell University; M. Lemmon, Texas A&M University;
and M. Wolff, Space Science Institute; and the Mars Exploration
Rover 'Athena' Science Team, report the imaging of transits of Mars
I (Phobos) and Mars II (Deimos) across the sun with the Pancam 1-cm
f/20 binocular CCD camera (+ solar neutral-density 5 filter;
passband 880 +/- 20 nm; exposure lengths 0.06 and 0.10 s, taken at
10-s intervals) onboard the 'Opportunity' Rover craft located on
the planet's surface at longitude 354.47417 deg east and latitude
1.94828 deg south. This is apparently the first direct imaging of
a natural-satellite transit from the surface of another planet.
The sun is approximately 20 pixels in diameter on the images, with
Mars I and II having apparent diameters of approximately 10-13 and
2 pixels, respectively. Mars II was already in transit when the
first image was obtained on Mar. 4.12773 UT, was approximately at
mid-transit on the Mar. 4.12785 image, and was between third and
fourth contacts on the Mar. 4.12819 image. Mars I was possibly
near first contact on the image of Mar. 7.11556, was near mid-
transit on Mar. 7.11567, and was near fourth contact on Mar.
7.11579."
External links
"Horizons System". ssd.jpl.nasa.gov. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. Retrieved May 10, 2024. (must use telnet interface for non-Earth observation points)
NASA/JPL/Cornell (2004-03-12). "PIA05556: Deimos Crosses Face of Sun". photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov. Retrieved May 10, 2024. Animation of the 4 March 2004 transit.
