Description

A transit of Venus takes place when the planet Venus passes directly between the Earth and the Sun. A transit is similar to a solar eclipse by our own Moon. However, although Venus is much larger than our Moon, it is also far more distant, so it only covers a tiny portion of the Sun.

A transit of Venus is a very rare event which occurs in pairs which are eight years apart, the time between these pairs of transits is however 121.5 and 105.5 years !
The previous pair of transits before 2004 happened in the year 1874 and 1882.

The next transits of Venus will take place on 10–11 December 2117, and 8 December 2125

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Image data

Name Sun
Type G-type main-sequence star
Age ~ 4.6 billion years
Absolute magnitude 4.83
Spectral classification G2V
Distance 1 AU – 8m 19s at light speed
from Milky Way core 27.200 ly
Equatorial radius 695.700 km – 109 Earths
Mass 333.000 Earths
Eq. Surface gravity 27,94 G
Sidereal rot. period 25,05 days
Apparant magnitude -26,74