/solar transit
/solar transit [body] [location] [local] [remember]
Mercury and Venus occasionally cross the face of the Sun, a transit, and the ISS, Hubble and the Tiangong station cross it far more often, for about a second at a time. Without a location this lists the next transit of each planet (date, time of greatest transit in UT, and how close to the Sun’s centre it passes). Give it a location and it works out what you would see from there.
Usage: /solar transit for the planet dates. /solar transit location: Madrid (any
city, or coordinates like 36.1628, -85.5016) for local times, or /solar transit local: True to use your saved default location. body: picks Mercury, Venus, ISS, Hubble or
Tiangong; without it you get the first planet transit you can see. A station always needs
a location. remember: True saves a typed location as your new default.
Planets, from your location — when the planet first touches the Sun, when it is fully on the disc, when it starts to leave and when it is gone, the greatest transit, how long it is fully on the disc, and where the Sun is in your sky at each moment. It picks the next listed transit you can see with the Sun up; if the Sun rises or sets during it, it says so. Times are on your location’s real clock.
Stations, from your location — the next week of transits and near misses around you. A station’s transit is visible only from a strip of ground a few kilometres wide, so each entry says whether you are inside it and, if not, roughly how far (to the nearest 5 km) and in which direction the centreline is. It shows the time, how long the crossing lasts, and where the Sun and the station are in your sky. The orbit data comes from Celestrak (or N2YO), and predictions drift: timing is good to a second or two at best, so re-check within a day or two of the event.
Private by design — every local reply is sent so only you can see it. Contact times to the second with the Sun’s position, and above all a distance from a strip a few kilometres wide, are specific enough to work back to a place. The planet dates without a location are public.
Local planet times need the planetary tables Andi uses, which end around 2053, so later transits (including every Venus transit, the next in 2117) appear in the dates only. Mercury is far too small to see without a telescope and a certified solar filter; never look at the Sun through any optics without one.
Parameters
| Name | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
body | No | Mercury, Venus, ISS, Hubble or Tiangong (default: next planet transit you can see) Options: Mercury, Venus, ISS, Hubble, Tiangong. |
location | No | City, decimal or DMS coordinates: show the next transit as seen from there |
local | No | Show the next transit from your saved default location |
remember | No | Also save this as your new default location (otherwise this is a one-off lookup) |