Let me re-define a transit from the pathetic sub-geocentric description
given in that article as representative of a dominant empiricist view
-

" In [ celestial sphere] astronomy, a planetary transit is when a
planet closer to the Sun passes in front of the Sun's disc as seen from
a more distant planet."

In heliocentric astronomy,a planetary transit is when a faster moving
planet, in an inner orbit, overtakes the slower moving Earth with the
central parent star as a backdrop -

http://www.vt-2004.org/mt-2003/mt-20...999-normal.jpg

The Sun is not a disk,along with the motions of the Earth it makes
existence possible,even your miserable existence..Cultivate your
understandings using contemporary imaging rather than using the
terminology of the 17th century powdered wigs wgho never appreciated
what these events are in heliocentric terms.

Thanks for posting,you make them look like fools even if you do not
mean to and I enjoy presenting this easy to understand material from
the viewpoint of an astronomer from the heliocentric tradition of
Copernicus,Galileo and Kepler.







TeaTime wrote:
Another fascinating find:

http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/canon_transits/

This resourceful chap has not only computed the next (extremely rare)
simultaneous transit of Venus and Mercury, but also plotted the excursions
of the Solar System barycentre from the centre of the sun over time:

Quote
"The Sun, then, not only has an orbit within the Solar System, almost TWO
THIRDS OF THE TIME the point it's orbiting about is outside the Sun! This
makes one wonder just how far the barycentre ever gets from the centre of
the Sun. I also kept track of minimum and maximum barycentre distances (both
local and global--whenever the sign of the first derivative of the
barycentre distance changes). At the all-time maximum for the period of the
integration in the year 86859, the barycentre will be 2.236 solar radii from
the centre of the Sun. In other words, if you focused on the barycentre and
watched the Sun in its orbit, it would be swinging around a point 1.236
solar radii outside the Sun."
Unquote

I wonder how this might affect Copernican heliocentric astronomy against a
fixed stellar background ...