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. 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.
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.
Observation by InSight A transit light curve of Deimos was obtained 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.
See also Astronomy on Mars List of missions to the Moons of Mars Solar eclipses on Mars Transit of Earth from Mars Transit of Mercury from Mars Transit of Phobos from Mars
Further reading J. Bell, M. Lemmon, M. Wolff, Transits of Mars I and II, IAU Circ., 8298, 2 (2004). www.cbat.eps.harvard.edu (TeX DVI file is at "POSSIBLE SUPERNOVA ASSOCIATED WITH Q0957+561; TRANSITS OF MARS I AND II" (dvi). cbat.eps.harvard.edu. Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams. Retrieved May 10, 2024.).
References
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 Mars Exploration Rover Mission. Opportunity: All Raw Images. Panoramic Camera :: Sol 039 (127 images)". marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery. Archived from the original on 2008-01-23. Retrieved May 10, 2024. Opportunity image gallery during Sol 39. Small images of the 4 March 2004 transit are near the bottom of the page. "NASA Mars Exploration Rover Mission. Spirit: All Raw Images. Panoramic Camera :: Sol 068 (258 images)". marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery. Archived from the original on 2004-03-25. Retrieved May 10, 2024. Spirit image gallery during Sol 68. Small images of the 13 March 2004 transit are near the bottom of the page. "NASA Mars Exploration Rover Mission. Spirit: All Raw Images. Panoramic Camera :: Sol 420 (38 images)". marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery. Archived from the original on 2005-10-24. Retrieved May 10, 2024. Spirit image gallery during Sol 420, Small images of the 9 March 2005 transit are near the middle of the page. 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.
