Venus Moving in for a Transit

By Nancy Atkinson - June 5, 2012 at 3:12 AM UTC | Solar Astronomy

Venus is moving in! The LASCO C3 coronograph on board the SOHO spacecraft has been watching the approach of Venus for its last solar transit until 2117. With coronagraphs, the Sun is blocked by an occulting disk, seen here in blue, so that SOHO can observe the much fainter features in the Sun's corona. The actual size of the Sun is represented by the white disk.

The transit of Venus will be tomorrow, June 5, starting at about 6pm Eastern Daylight Time, or about 10pm UTC. Universe Today will be coordinating 8 hours of rockin' live coverage, starting at 20:00 UTC (2:00 p.m. PDT, 5 pm EDT) on Tuesday. During the webcast, go to the coordinating page on Universe Today,

UniverseToday.com/transit

, or you can also view it on the

Virtual Star party Google+ page

, or on

Universe Today's YouTube live feed.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com