A MATLAB Script for Predicting Transits of Mercury and Venus

Local circumstances of solar transits of the planets Mercury and Venus.

PDF document and a MATLAB script named transit.m which can be used to predict the local circumstances of transits of Mercury and Venus across the Sun. This software provides the universal times and topocentric coordinates of the Sun at the beginning (ingress - exterior contact) and end (egress - exterior contact) of the solar transit, and the time and coordinates at least distance. The source ephemeris for this routine is a JPL binary ephemeris file. This application uses several functions ported to MATLAB from the Fortran version of the NOVAS (Naval Observatory Vector Astrometry Subroutines) source code developed at the United States Naval Observatory (www.usno.navy.mil/USNO/astronomical-applications/software-products/novas). JPL binary ephemeris files for Windows compatible computers can be downloaded at www.cdeagle.com.