Tonight beginning at 22:09 UTC, Venus will appear as a dark spot in front of the sun for the first time in eight years, and for the last time for more than a century — the next transit of Venus won’t occur until December, 2117.
One of the best sites to help visualize this even is using the viewer on HeyWhatsThat.com.
It allows you to adjust the time and your location and get a view of exactly what the sky will be looking like. It’s quite impressive and very helpful.
As with the solar eclipse a few weeks ago, Xavier Jubier has put together some great maps to show what will be going on.
In addition to the standard map showing where the transit will be visible, Xavier also shows us a map (via Jay Anderson) that includes mean cloud cover for June, which helps to show your likelihood of actually having a clear sky with which to view the event.
As with a solar eclipse, do not look directly into the sun (even with sunglasses on) to try to view this event. There are ways to do it safely and we strongly encourage you to take those precautions.
About Mickey Mellen
Mickey has been using Google Earth since it was released in 2005, and has created a variety of geo-related sites including Google Earth Hacks. He runs a web design firm in Marietta, GA, where he lives with his wife and two kids.
Hi Google Earth Blog 🙂
Unfortunately I am not going to be able to see this Venus Transit today… or rather, never in my entire life!
At any rate, my MBA group and I have started a blog on GIS and its various applications in business. We have really enjoyed getting to see just how much GIS has helped with so many industries in our life.
Please give our blog a look – let us know what you think!
http://www.iegisblog.com
Cheers,
Tess
Cool have to see that !
A couple of pictures taken during the 2012 Venus transit from the Mauna Loa Solar Observatory:
http://xjubier.free.fr/en/site_pages/transits/ToV_2012_Photos.html