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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.
Kepler's De raris mirisque Anni 1631 Phaenomenis notice to astronomers of the impending transits of Mercury and Venus, 1631. By the 17th century, two developments allowed for the transits of planets across the face of the Sun to be predicted and observed: the telescope and the new astronomy of Johannes Kepler, which assumed elliptical, rather than circular, planetary orbits.
2012 transit of Venus, projected to a white card by a telescope. A transit of Venus is the appearance of Venus in front of the Sun, during inferior conjunction. Since the orbit of Venus is slightly inclined relative to Earth's orbit, most inferior conjunctions with Earth, which occur every synodic period of 1.6 years, do not produce a transit ...
The transit of celestial objects is one of the few key phenomena used today for the study of exoplanetary systems. Today, transit photometry is the leading form of exoplanet discovery . [ 5 ] As an exoplanet moves in front of its host star there is a dimming in the luminosity of the host star that can be measured. [ 6 ]
The black drop effect was long thought to be due to Venus's thick atmosphere, and indeed it was held to be the first real evidence that Venus had an atmosphere. However, it is now thought by many to be an optical effect caused by the combination of the extreme darkening of the Sun's disk near its apparent edge and the intrinsic imperfection of ...
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One variation on the use of seven is the use of the number six in numerology, used as a final hallmark in a series leading to a seven (e.g. mankind is created on the sixth day in Genesis, out of the seven days of creation). Sometimes, it is used to refer to a value falling short of a seven.