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A transit of Venus takes place when Venus passes directly between the Sun and the Earth (or any other superior planet), becoming visible against (and hence obscuring a small portion of) the solar disk. During a transit, Venus is visible as a small black circle moving across the face of the Sun. Transits of Venus reoccur periodically.
Ground track example from Heavens-Above.An observer in Sicily can see the International Space Station when it enters the circle at 9:26 p.m. The observer would see a bright object appear in the northwest, which would move across the sky to a point almost overhead, where it disappears from view, in the space of three minutes.
Transits of Venus directly between the Earth and the Sun's visible disc are rare astronomical events. The first such transit to be predicted and observed was the 1639 transit of Venus, seen and recorded by English astronomers Jeremiah Horrocks and William Crabtree. [18]
The next time a mutual planetary transit or occultation will happen (as seen from Earth) will be on 22 November 2065 at about 12:43 UTC, when Venus near superior conjunction (with an angular diameter of 10.6") will transit in front of Jupiter (with an angular diameter of 30.9"); however, this will take place only 8° west of the Sun, and will therefore not be visible to the unaided/unprotected ...
1761 – Mikhail Lomonosov is the first to discover and appreciate the atmosphere of Venus during his observation of the transit of Venus. [116] 1766 – Johann Titius finds the Titius-Bode rule for planetary distances. [117] 1772 – Johann Bode publishes the Titius-Bode rule for planetary distances. [117]
At their closest point, Jupiter and Venus will be just half a degree apart – about the diameter of a full moon – despite being more than 600 million km (400 million miles) away from each other ...
Venus was 0.7205 au from the Sun on the day of transit, decidedly less than average. [9] Moving far backwards in time, more than 200,000 years ago Venus sometimes passed by at a distance from Earth of barely less than 38 million km, and will next do that after more than 400,000 years.
A simultaneous transit of Venus and the Earth as seen from Mars. 6 million years Estimated time for Comet C/1999 F1 (Catalina) , one of the longest period comets known to return to the inner Solar System, after having travelled in its orbit out to its aphelion 66,600 AU (1.053 light-years) from the Sun and back.