Transit of Venus from Saturn
A '''transit of Venus across the Sun as seen from Saturn''' takes place when the planet [[Venus (planet)|Venus]] passes directly between the [[Sun]] and [[Saturn (planet)|Saturn]], obscuring a small part of the Sun's disc for an observer on Saturn. During a [[astronomical transit|transit]], Venus can be seen from Saturn as a small black disc moving across the face of the Sun.
Naturally, no one has ever seen a transit of Venus from Saturn, nor is this likely to happen in any foreseeable future. Nevertheless, the next one will take place on [[May 6]] [[2012]].
A transit could hypothetically be observed from the surface of one of Saturn's moons rather than from Saturn itself. The times and circumstances of the transits would naturally be slightly different.
The Venus-Saturn [[synodic period]] is 229.494 days. It can be calculated using the formula 1/(1/P-1/Q), where P is the [[sidereal year|sidereal orbital period]] of Venus (224.695434 days) and Q is the [[orbital period]] of Saturn (10746.940 days).
The [[inclination]] of Venus's orbit with respect to Saturn's [[ecliptic]] is 2.06°, which is less than its value of 3.39° with respect to Earth's ecliptic.
<!-- cos i12 = sin i1 sin i2 cos (OM1 - OM2) * cos i1 cos i2 -->
The transit that occurred on [[March 21]] [[1894]] was particularly interesting because later on the same day there was a [[transit of Mercury from Saturn]], followed by the beginning of a [[transit of Mercury from Venus| transit of Mercury as viewed from Venus]], although no two of the transits occurred simultaneously.
Also interesting is the event of [[December 9]] [[2056]], when a Venus transit will begin a few hours after a near-miss by Mercury.
{| border cellspacing=0 cellpadding=5 align="center"
!colspan="2"|Transits of Venus from Saturn
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| [[March 21]] [[1894]]
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| [[May 6]] [[2012]]
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| [[December 21]] [[2012]]
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| [[January 14]] [[2028]]
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| [[August 31]] [[2028]]
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| [[December 9]] [[2056]]
|}
==See also==
* [[Astronomical transit]]
{{transit visibility table}}
==References==
* [[Albert Marth]], ''Note on the Transit of Mercury over the Sun’s Disc, which takes place for Venus on 1894 March 21, and on the Transits of Venus and Mercury, which occur for Saturn’s System on the same day'', Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, '''54''' (1894), 172–174. [http://adsbit.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?1894MNRAS..54..172M]
==External links==
* [http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/ JPL Solar System Simulator]
[[Category:Astronomical transits]]
[[de:Venusdurchgang von Saturn]]