Solar eclipses on Jupiter

Short description: When moons of Jupiter pass before the Sun

A picture of Jupiter and its moon Io taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The black spot is Io's shadow. Jupiter and the Great Red Spot (visible on the lower right), with Ganymede (immediately on the upper right) casting its shadow on Jupiter. The other moons are Europa (further right), Io (first on left), and Callisto (furthest on left). Photo taken with Nikon P900 on 24 July 2020, ten days after opposition.

Solar eclipses on Jupiter occur when any of the natural satellites of Jupiter pass in front of the Sun as seen from the planet Jupiter.[1]

For bodies that appear smaller in angular diameter than the Sun, the proper term would be a transit. For bodies that are larger than the apparent size of the Sun, the proper term would be an occultation.

There are four satellites capable of completely occulting the Sun: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. All of the others are too small or too distant to be able to completely occult the Sun, so can only transit the Sun. Most of the more distant satellites also have orbits that are strongly inclined to the plane of Jupiter's orbit, and would rarely be seen transiting Jupiter.

When the four largest satellites of Jupiter, the Galilean satellites, occult the Sun, a shadow transit can be seen on the surface of Jupiter which can be observed from Earth in telescopes.

Io shadow on Jupiter.

Eclipses of the Sun from Jupiter are not particularly rare, since Jupiter is very large and its axial tilt (which is related to the plane of the orbits of its satellites) is relatively small—indeed, the vast majority of the orbits of all four of the objects capable of occulting the Sun will result in a solar occultation visible from somewhere on Jupiter, with every satellite except Callisto guaranteed to produce an eclipse on every orbit.

The related phenomenon of satellite eclipses in the shadow of Jupiter has been observed since the time of Giovanni Cassini and Ole Rømer in the mid Seventeenth Century. It was soon noticed that predicted times differed from observed times in a regular way, varying from up to ten minutes early to up to ten minutes late. Rømer correctly realized that the variations were caused by the varying distance between Earth and Jupiter as the two planets moved in their orbits around the Sun. Later, in 1678, Christiaan Huygens used these errors to make the first accurate determination of the speed of light.

Spacecraft can be used to observe the solar eclipses on Jupiter; these include Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 (1973 and 1974), Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 (1979), Galileo orbiter (1995–2003), Cassini–Huygens (2000), New Horizons (2007), and Juno (2016-present) observed the transits of their moons and its shadows.

## Contents

* 1 Visibility from Jupiter
* 2 Gallery
* 3 References
* 4 External links

## Visibility from Jupiter

The mean angular diameter of the Sun as viewed from Jupiter is 372 arc-seconds, or 6' 12" (about ​1⁄5 that of the Sun as viewed from Earth), varying slightly from 381" at perihelion to 357" at aphelion. Unlike the near coincidence of the apparent sizes of the Moon and Sun as viewed from Earth, this perspective exaggerates the apparent diameters of all the Galilean moons in comparison to the Sun. Even distant Callisto is over 50% larger, and Io is nearly six times as large. This disparity in angular size makes the moons' shadows on Jupiter more defined than the lunar shadow on Earth during a total solar eclipse, as it narrows the penumbra for a given distance.[2]

## Gallery

* A computer-generated image showing a double shadow transit on Jupiter. The two satellites visible, Io and Europa, just to the right of the planet, are responsible for the shadows.

* A simulated view of an Io transit of Jupiter as viewed from the Earth, showing the shadow apparently leading Io.

## References

1. ↑ "NASA's Juno Mission Checks Out Epic Io Eclipse on Jupiter | Space". 17 September 2019. https://www.space.com/amp/juno-sees-io-moon-shadow-on-jupiter.html.
2. ↑ "Shadows on Jupiter Cast by the Galilean Moons". Sydney Observatory. 2010. http://www.sydneyobservatory.com.au/2010/shadows-on-jupiter-cast-by-the-galilean-moons-how-often-and-how-many-can-there-be/.

## External links

* NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day: Jupiter, Io and Ganymede's Shadow (13 October 1995)
* NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day: Io's Shadow (7 October 1996)
* NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day: A Triple Eclipse on Jupiter (2 February 1998)
* NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day: Jupiter, Io and Shadow (7 December 2002)
* NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day: When Moons and Shadows Dance (27 February 2003)
* NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day: Pastel Planet, Triple Eclipse (11 November 2004)
* NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day: Shadows Across Jupiter (15 February 2013)
* NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day: Jupiter Triple-Moon Conjunction (6 February 2015) \- includes shadows only from Europa and distant Callisto
* Brufau, Rainer. (2021). Triple shadow phenomena on Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus from 1000 CE to 3000 CE (Version 0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5515898

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Solar eclipses

Lists of eclipses|

| By century|

* Antiquity
* 20th BC
* 19th BC
* 18th BC
* 17th BC
* 16th BC
* 15th BC
* 14th BC
* 13th BC
* 12th BC
* 11th BC
* 10th BC
* 9th BC
* 8th BC
* 7th BC
* 6th BC
* 5th BC
* 4th BC
* 3rd BC
* 2nd BC
* 1st BC
* 1st
* 2nd
* 3rd
* 4th
* 5th
* 6th
* 7th
* 8th
* 9th
* 10th
* 11th
* 12th
* 13th
* 14th
* 15th
* 16th
* 17th
* 18th
* 19th
* 20th
* 21st
* 22nd
* 23rd
* 24th
* 25th
* 26th
* 27th
* 28th
* 29th
* 30th

|

Saros series|

* 110
* 111
* 112
* 113
* 114
* 115
* 116
* 117
* 118
* 119
* 120
* 121
* 122
* 123
* 124
* 125
* 126
* 127
* 128
* 129
* 130
* 131
* 132
* 133
* 134
* 135
* 136
* 137
* 138
* 139
* 140
* 141
* 142
* 143
* 144
* 145
* 146
* 147
* 148
* 149
* 150
* 151
* 152
* 153
* 154
* 155
* 156
* 157
* 158
* 159
* 160
* 161
* 162

Visibility|

* Australia
* China
* Philippines
* Russia
* Ukraine
* United Kingdom
* United States

Historical|

* Mursili's eclipse (1312 BC)
* Assyrian eclipse (763 BC)
* Eclipse of Thales (585 BC)

Total/hybrid eclipses
→ next total/hybrid|

Script error: No such module "Highlighted date list".

Annular eclipses
→ next annular|

Script error: No such module "Highlighted date list".

Partial eclipses
→ next partial|

Script error: No such module "Highlighted date list".

Other bodies|

* Mars
* Moon
* Jupiter
* Neptune
* Pluto
* Saturn
* Uranus

Related topics|

* Eclipse chasing
* Solar viewer
* Planetary transit
* Solar eclipses in fiction

* Book
* Category
* Commons
* Portal
* WikiProject

* v
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Jupiter

* Outline of Jupiter

Geography|

* Atmosphere
* Great Red Spot
* Magnetosphere
* Rings

Moons|

| Inner moons|

* Adrastea
* Amalthea
* Metis
* Thebe

|

Galilean moons|

* Callisto
* Europa
* Ganymede
* Io

Irregular moons|

* Ananke group
* Carme group
* Himalia group
* Pasiphae group

Ungrouped moons|

* Carpo
* Themisto
* Valetudo

Astronomy|

| General|

* Jupiter-crossing minor planets
* Solar eclipses

|

Trojans|

* Greek camp
* Trojan camp

Impact events|

* Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9
* 2009 Jupiter impact event
* 2010 Jupiter impact event

Exploration and
orbiting missions|

| Current|

* Juno

|

Past|

* Cassini
* Galileo
* New Horizons
* Pioneer program
* Pioneer 10
* Pioneer 11
* Ulysses
* Voyager program
* Voyager 1
* Voyager 2

Future|

* Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (2022)
* Europa Clipper (2025)

Proposed|

* Io Volcano Observer (2021)
* Laplace-P (2023)
* Smara (2030)

Related|

* Fiction
* Jovian
* Moons
* Mythology

* Book
* Category

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