Transit of Venus 2012—Sun Show Will Be Last for a Century. Early this week sky-watchers around the world will be able to witness a transit of Venus—a celestial event that won't be seen again for more than a century.
Visible either Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on where you live, the transit will offer astronomers a chance to refine our understanding of Venus as well as to tweak models for searching for planets around other stars. (Pictures: See what the Venus transit will look like.) Transits happen when a planet crosses between Earth and the sun. Only Mercury and Venus, which are closer to the sun than our planet, can undergo this unusual alignment. M104b_peris2048.jpg from nasa.gov.
Laser_Towards_Milky_Ways_Centre.jpg from wikimedia.org. Hubble captures view of “Mystic Mountain” This craggy fantasy mountaintop enshrouded by wispy clouds looks like a bizarre landscape from Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, which is even more dramatic than fiction, captures the chaotic activity atop a pillar of gas and dust, three light-years tall, which is being eaten away by the brilliant light from nearby bright stars. The pillar is also being assaulted from within, as infant stars buried inside it fire off jets of gas that can be seen streaming from towering peaks.