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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.
Image of the transit taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft. Venus is in the upper right quadrant. The 2012 transit of Venus, when the planet Venus appeared as a small, dark spot passing across the face of the Sun, began at 22:09 UTC on 5 June 2012, and finished at 04:49 UTC on 6 June. [1]
Map of planets of the Solar System during the transit of Venus on 5-6 June 2012: Image title: Map of planets of the Solar System, Halley's Comet, Pluto and Ceres during the transit of Venus on 5-6 June 2012, viewed perpendicular to the ecliptic directly above the Sun. Brighter parts of orbits are nearer to the viewer than the ecliptic and ...
Global topographic map of Venus, with all probe landings marked (red: returned images; with additional black dot: analyzed samples). There have been 46 space missions to the planet Venus (including gravity-assist flybys). Missions to Venus constitute part of the exploration of Venus.
A map of Venus compiled from data recorded by NASA's Pioneer Venus Orbiter spacecraft beginning in 1978. In 1978, NASA sent two Pioneer spacecraft to Venus. The Pioneer mission consisted of two components, launched separately: an orbiter and a multiprobe. The Pioneer Venus Multiprobe carried one large and three small atmospheric probes. The ...
Historically, transits of Venus were important, because they allowed astronomers to determine the size of the astronomical unit, and hence the size of the Solar System as shown by Jeremiah Horrocks in 1639 with the first known observation of a Venus transit (after history's first observed planetary transit in 1631, of Mercury). [186]
On June 5 2012, SDO collected images of the rarest predictable solar event--the transit of Venus across the face of the sun. This event lasted approximately 6 hours and happens in pairs eight years apart, which are separated from each other by 105 or 121 years. The last transit was in 2004 and the next will not happen until 2117.
Venus profile at NASA's Solar System Exploration site; Missions to Venus and Image catalog at the National Space Science Data Center; Soviet Exploration of Venus and Image catalog at Mentallandscape.com; Venus page at The Nine Planets; Transits of Venus at NASA.gov; Geody Venus, a search engine for surface features; Cartographic resources. Map ...