Can any of the 2 planets closer to the sun cause an eclipse?
Hi Davo! I know of at least four places in our solar system where they see eclipses. The earth and our moon are one. Mercury and Venus are too far away to create eclipses. They do move across the face of the sun from time to time, as seen from earth (Venus will do so in 2012), but we see them as no more than dots, far too small to block any noticeable amount of sunlight. Astronomers call these events “transits.” The other three places are Mars, Jupiter and Pluto. All solar eclipses on Mars are either annular eclipses or partial. The larger moon, Phobos, is close enough to the planet to cover 60% the sun, enough that we would call it an annular eclipse rather than a mere transit. Phobos is so close, in fact, that these eclipses are seen only in the martian tropics and temperate zones. From the north and south poles of Mars, an observer could see right “over the top” of Phobos to the uneclipsed sun. After a Phobos eclipse of the sun, you’d have a lunar eclipse less than six hours later,
