Saturday, January 19, 2013

Transit of Venus Over the Sun

A transit of Venus across the Sun takes place when the planet Venus passes directly between the Sun and Earth. During a transit, Venus can be seen from Earth as a small black disk moving across the face of the Sun.

This cosmic event took place for the last time in this century on 6th June 2012. This transit  began at 22:09 UTC(Coordinated Universal Time) on 5 June 2012, and finished at 04:49 UTC on 6 June. Depending on the position of the observer, the exact times varied by up to ±7 minutes.

After the invention of telescope, mankind had observed the rare celestial phenomena only for seven times. Transits of Venus occurs in pairs, eight years apart, which are themselves separated by more than a century.

The last transit of Venus was on 5 and 6 June 2012, and was the last Venus transit of the 21st century; the prior transit took place on 8 June 2004. The previous pair of transits were in December 1874 and December 1882. The next transits of Venus will be 10–11 December 2117, and in December 2125.


References
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_of_Venus
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_of_Venus,_2012 

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