Determining the eccentricity of Mercury’s orbit from its transit

Abstract

Abstract In the present work, we propose a procedure to allow undergraduate students to obtain two experimental values of the Mercury–Sun distance, using geometric compositions of photographs of Mercury’s transits at its perihelion and its aphelion. From those distances, the model also allows students to calculate the value of the eccentricity of Mercury’s orbit. Our procedure is validated against published values based on Mercury’s transits in 2006 and 2016.