Venus Transit
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- Visualizations by:
- Tom Bridgman
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- Written by:
- Karen Fox
- View full credits
On June 5, 2012 at 6:03 p.m. EDT, the planet Venus will cross directly between Earth and the sun—a journey completed only six times since the invention of the telescope. To spectators, the planet will appear as a black dot moving from left to right across the sun's bright disk. Among the rarest planetary alignments, the transit of Venus follows an odd cycle: Two occur eight years apart, and then 105 or 121 years pass until one happens again. After June 5, the next transit will come about in 2117. The precise moments when Venus appears and disappears from Earth's field of view are of particular significance. In the 18th century, scientists used the timing of the transit to improve early calculations of the distance between the sun and Earth. The videos below show how Venus will make its final transit of the century.
For More Information
See NASA.gov
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Cover image courtesy of NASA's Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE)
GOES satellite image, captured by the GOES 12 satellite, courtesy of NOAA
Map of transit visibility courtesy of Michael Zeiler
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Animators
- Tom Bridgman (Global Science and Technology, Inc.) [Lead]
- Walt Feimer (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)
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Writer
- Karen Fox (ADNET Systems, Inc.) [Lead]
Related pages
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ID: 3943 Visualization
Venus Transit - 2012
Read moreIt was your last chance for the next 105 years.A transit is when a planet passes directly between the Sun and the Earth and we see the planet as a small dot moving slowly across the face of the Sun. A Venus transit occurred in 2004 (see Venus Transit from GOES/SXI). Prior to that it was 1882. The last Venus transit occurred on June 5-6, 2012 and the next one won't occur until 2117 (See the NASA Eclipse Web Site).To understand the significance of these events, it helps to know the history of how the Venus transits provided one of the first estimates of the size of the Solar System, and eventually the Universe (see A Brief History of the Transit of Venus).In this visualization, there are a few things which should be noted. 1) The camera view is NOT from anywhere on the surface of the Earth, but corresponds to an observer positioned along the Earth-Sun line, but over the north pole of the Earth. This causes the path of Venus to cross the solar disk lower (closer to the solar equator) than it would appear to an observer on the surface of the Earth.2) The ephemeris used for computing the planetary positions was not the high-precision JPL ephemeris (DE-421), but a lower-precision approximation. Yet, when tracked in detail, the transit takes place only about five hours later. It was decided that since the view of the transit in this visual does not correspond to any actual location ON the Earth, it might be misleading to present high-precision timing of the event.This visualization was developed for conceptual illustration and not meant for precision scientific use. ||
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ID: 20190 Animation
2012 Venus Transit
Read moreMovie showing an artist's conception of the 2012 Venus transit. Starting on the surface of Venus, the camera pulls up through the planets clouds and flies back towards Earth to watch Venus's transit accross the Sun. || Venus 2012 Transit animation. ||
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