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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.
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.
Consequently, Venus transits only occur when an inferior conjunction takes place during some days of June or December, when the orbits of Venus and Earth cross a straight line with the Sun. [189] This results in Venus transiting above Earth in a sequence currently of 8 years, 105.5 years, 8 years and 121.5 years, forming cycles of 243 years.
The orbit of Venus is 224.7 Earth days (7.4 avg. Earth months [30.4 days]). The phases of Venus result from the planet's orbit around the Sun inside the Earth's orbit giving the telescopic observer a sequence of progressive lighting similar in appearance to the Moon's phases. It presents a full image when it is on the opposite side of the Sun.
Io's shadow is seen on the surface of Jupiter, leading Io slightly due to the Sun and Earth not being in the same line. One type of transit involves the motion of a planet between a terrestrial observer and the Sun. This can happen only with inferior planets, namely Mercury and Venus (see transit of Mercury and transit of Venus).
Planets always appear along a line in the sky because they all orbit the sun in a mostly flat plane called the ecliptic. Venus shines brightly in the west, while amber orange-colored Mars is ...
NASA is gearing up for its Parker Solar Probe to do a final flyby of Venus on Wednesday on its way to making history as the closest any human-made object has ever been to the sun. Parker will use ...
The observers were ordered to record the transit in four phases of Venus' journey across of the sun. The first phase was when Venus began "touching" the outside rim of the sun. In the second phase, Venus was completely within the sun's disc, but was still "touching" the outer rim. In the third phase, Venus has crossed the sun, was still ...