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Transits of Venus across the disk of the Sun are among the rarest of planetary alignments

only six such events have occurred since the invention of the telescope (1631, 1639, 1761, 1769, 1874 and 1882

event begins with contact I which is the instant when the planet's disk is externally tangent with the Sun. The entire disk of the Venus is first seen at contact II when the planet is internally tangent with the Sun. During the next several hours, Venus gradually traverses the solar disk at a relative angular rate of approximately 4 arc-min/hr. At contact III, the planet reaches the opposite limb and is once again internally tangent with the Sun. The transit ends at contact IV when the planet's limb is externally tangent to the Sun

image was taken in preparation to observe the transit of Venus across the sun's face on June 5-6.

Hubble Space Telescope

Hubble cannot look at the sun directly, so astronomers are planning to point the telescope at the Earth's moon, using it as a mirror to capture reflected sunlight and isolate the small fraction of the light that passes through Venus's atmosphere. Imprinted on that small amount of light are the fingerprints of the planet’s atmospheric makeup.

combined 17 exposures taken at 20-minute intervals to create this sequence from the transit of Venus in June 2004.

transit of Venus, happens only four times every 243 years

spacing between each occurrence is very uneven: it's 121½ years, then 8 years, then 105½ years, then 8 years again

On June 5 (June 6 in Australia and Asia), it will pass between the Earth and Sun… an event which only happens about twice and century and won’t happen again until the year 2117!

now is the time to begin your preparations to view the transit of Venus.

Because the transit of Venus is such a rare event, many retailers are carrying special eclipse/transit viewing glasses

during this transit, our sun will be displaying sun spots

allows for comparing changing light patterns of suspected exoplanets with those that occur much closer to home

Information gathered during the transit, he points out, could very well reveal pertinent information later on

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) satellite will watch from space as Venus crosses the sun's face on June 5 (June 6 in the Eastern Hemisphere)

some SDO scientists are headed to Alaska to watch the seven-hour event in its entirety.

For the United States, only Hawaii and Alaska will see the entire transit

Transits occur in truly weird combinations, either in a June or a December. When one happens, another one happens in the same month eight years later.

EnlargeDescription of the June 5-6 transit of Venus across

less than half a second to capture these incredible shots of the Shenzhou-10 module docked to Tiangong-1 Chinese station transiting across the Sun

The Tiangong-1 space station is just 10.4 meters (34.1 ft) in length, while the Shenzou 10 is 9.25 meters (30.35 ft) long

The transit duration was just 0.46 seconds

Venus will take six hours to march across the star’s face, appearing as an inky black dot in silhouette against the looming solar disk

Because the planet’s orbit is slightly off-kilter, its solar transits come in pairs spaced eight years apart, with more than 100 years between pairs.

Paris Observatory, who will join Venus Express team members in Svalbard, Norway to observe the transit against the midnight sun.

Your local circumstances are computed below. You can change the location by either dragging the marker on the map or searching for an address. From the menu on the top right you can specify the year of the transit (1639 to 2125). Clicking the icon at the top right corner of the map, you can switch the area of visibility on and off. Click on the icon on the lower right for more detailed information, including times of sunrise and sunset.

NASA's Kepler mission has discovered 11 new planetary systems hosting 26 confirmed planets. These discoveries nearly double the number of verified planets and triple the number of stars known to have more than one planet that transits, or passes in front of, the star.

The planets orbit their host star once every six to 143 days. All are closer to their host star than Venus is to our sun.

This image is from NASA Astronaut Don Pettit on board the International Space Station

I knew the Transit of Venus would occur during my rotation, so I brought a solar filter with me when my expedition left for the ISS in December 2011

This is his first image, and we’ll add more as they become available

Astronomers using a small ground-based telescope have discovered two unusual alien planets around extremely bright, distant stars.

detected using the Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT) in southern Arizona, which has a lens that is roughly as powerful as a high-end digital camera

slightly more diminutive than Kepler

The first terrestrial discovery of ringwoodite confirms the presence of massive amounts of water 400 to 700 kilometers beneath Earth's surface

Ringwoodite is a form of the mineral peridot, believed to exist in large quantities under high pressures in the transition zone

Ringwoodite has been found in meteorites but, until now, no terrestrial sample has ever been unearthed because scientists haven't been able to conduct fieldwork at extreme depths

This is the first transit of the sun by a planet observed from any planet other than Earth, and also the first imaging of Mercury from Mars

Mercury fills only about one-sixth of one pixel as seen from such great distance, so the darkening does not have a distinct shape, but its position follows Mercury's expected path based on orbital calculations.

The observations were made on June 3, 2014,

NASA is marking two milestones in the search for planets like Earth; the successful completion of the Kepler Space Telescope's three-and-a-half-year prime mission and the beginning of an extended mission that could last as long as four years.

identify more than 2,300 planet candidates and confirm more than 100 planets

hundreds of Earth-size planet candidates have been found

protein that is necessary for lactation in mammals inhibits the critical cellular transition that is an early indicator of breast cancer and metastasis

first confirmed report that this protein, called Elf5, is a tumor suppressor in breast cancer

findings provide new avenues to pursue in treating and diagnosing breast cancer and possibly cancers of other organs as well