June 7, 2004
Transit of Venus
If you want to view a webcast of the transit of Venus across the sun, you can do so here.
On June 8, 2004, astronomers in many parts of the world will watch as Venus moves across the disk of the Sun, one of the rarest planetary alignments. Only six Venus transits have occurred since the invention of the telescope in the 1600s.Posted by Ithildin at June 7, 2004 6:16 PM | PROCURE FINE OLD WORLD ABSINTHEFor hundreds of years, transits of Venus have been important for scientific research. From the seventeenth century onward, Venus transits provided observers with data that eventually led to a very close estimate of the astronomical unit-the distance between Earth and the Sun.
Transits of Venus occur in pairs that are eight years apart, then don't happen again for more than a century. The last two Venus transits were in 1874 and 1882, so no one alive today has seen one. After transits in 2004 and 2012, there won't be another until 2117.
