Is there ever a time when, for example, Mars eclipses Jupiter as viewed from our planet? If so, how often? Do astronomers get excited when this happens?
Here’s the info from Wikipedia.
They are called transits. The one in front is like a tiny dot moving across the face of the one behind it. There is no combo of them in which the one in front can actually cover up the one behind it as viewed from our vantage point.
Sure there is. Venus, for example, can occult Mercury, or Jupiter can occult Saturn. (They’re called occultations when the nearer object appears larger.)
Um, no. Planet-planet occulations are very rare, but they do happen.
*** Ponder
Sorry, my brain must have short-circuited. I don’t know where I got the notion that such a thing could not happen.
Perhaps you were thinking that nowhere else in the solar system matches the particular sun-moon conditions where the closer body near-perfectly eclipses the further one.
If he was, he was wrong about that, too.