RARE ASTRONOMICAL EVENT on June 8, 2004!

Venus to transit between Earth and sun
Rare opportuity for astronomers

Tuesday, May 11, 2004 Posted: 1:37 PM EDT (1737 GMT)

On June 8, 2004, the silhouette of the planet Venus will cross the face of the Sun as seen from the Earth.


LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Europe, the Middle East and much of Asia and Africa will offer prime viewing next month for an astronomical event that has not occurred for 122 years -- the transit of the planet Venus across the sun.

Weather permitting, for six hours on June 8 astronomers and the public will be able to see the planet named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty passing directly between Earth and the sun.

The event has been billed as a once in a lifetime experience because the last transit was on December 6, 1882 and the next one will not occur until June 6, 2012, but will not be visible in Britain and other parts of Europe.

"Something wonderful, something marvelous is happening on June 8th and will be witnessed and experienced by millions of people all over the world," Gordon Bromage, a professor of astronomy at England's University of Central Lancashire, told a news conference Tuesday.

"It is an extremely rare astrological event."

The transit, when Venus will appear as an intense black dot about 1/30th the diameter of the sun, will be visible in the morning in Britain, most of Europe and Africa, later in the day in the Middle East and across Russia and India and later still in the Far East, which will get a limited view....


FULL STORY HERE.