This picture shows what a transit of Venus might look like. The big black dot near the bottom is Venus. The yellow arrows show how Venus will move during the transit in 2004.
Click on image for full size
This illustration is original Windows to the Universe artwork created by Randy Russell. The image of the Sun is courtesy SOHO (ESA & NASA); information on the apparent size and path of Venus courtesy Fred Espenak, NASA's GSFC.
Transits of Venus
Sometimes the planet Venus gets between Earth and the Sun. When it does, we see a black dot move across the Sun. The black dot is Venus. Astronomers have a name for this. They call it a "transit" of Venus. A transit is like an eclipse
of the Sun.
Transits of Venus don't happen very often. The last one was way back in 1882!
There will be a transit of Venus on June 8, 2004. There will be another one June 6, 2012. The next transit after that won't happen for a very long time.
NASA has
a web site with lots of news about the transit in 2004.
In the past, astronomers made some
measurements during a transit. Those measurements
helped them figure out how far away Venus is. They also helped scientists
figure out how far Earth is from the Sun.
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