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Last Post 10/15/2007 11:33 AM by  Kris Sigsbee
eclipses
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10/15/2007 9:52 AM

    cindy s

    would solar eclipses occur, or be seen from the outer solar system planets if they're so far away from the sun?


    Kris Sigsbee



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    10/15/2007 11:33 AM

    Hi Cindy,

    That's a great question.

    Here on Earth, we can see a solar eclipse when the Moon passes in front of the Sun because the Sun and the Moon have about the same apparent size in the sky. The Sun is much bigger than the Moon, but because it is much farther away from us than the Moon, it looks small in the sky. When one astronomical object like our Moon passes in front of another astronomical object that has approximately the same apparent size (sometimes scientists would say "angular size" instead), we call this an eclipse.

    If the objects have very different angular or apparent sizes, so that the object in the background appears to be much larger than the object passing in front of it, scientists say a transit has occurred. During an eclipse, the Moon almost completely blocks out the Sun. During a transit, for example a transit of Venus, the planet Venus passes over the disk of the Sun, as viewed from the Earth, but the planet Venus does not block out the Sun completely.

    I don't know the answer to your question for sure, but I would say it is very likely that transits and possibly eclipses would be visible from the planets in the outer solar system, such as Jupiter, or maybe even their moons. Whether or not eclipses or transits could be observed would depend on the orbits of the various planets and moons and their relative angular sizes. In the inner solar system, the Mars rovers have observed transits of the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos passing across the disk of the Sun. You can read more about these transits here: http://www.nasa.gov/home/..._solar_eclipses.html

    Kris



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