Catalog of Transits of Venus. A transit is the passage of a planet across the Sun's bright disk.
At this time, the planet can be seen as a small black disk slowly moving in front of the Sun. The orbits of Mercury and Venus lie inside Earth's orbit, so they are the only planets which can pass between Earth and Sun to produce a transit. Transits are very rare astronomical events. In the case of Venus, there are on average two transits every one and a quarter centuries. Transit of Venus, Sun-Earth Day 2012. Figure 1 - A couple viewing the transit in 1769!
On June 5, 2012, you will see the planet Venus as it moves across the face of the early morning sun. This astronomical oddity has played a very important role over the last few centuries in giving scientists a way to understand the size of the solar system. There is some evidence that the ancient Babylonians saw and recorded on a tablet something about Venus and the Sun in the 16th Century B.C., but the record is not clear. It is fair to say though that Galileo Galilee with his telescope, in 1610, was the first human to actually see Venus as more than just a bright point of light in the sky. Transit of Venus, Sun-Earth Day 2012. Transit of Venus .org. Venus Transit - Home.