Cosmic! Venus to transit the Sun in rare spectacle
The Venus transit in 2004: Rex
Tourists and locals across the world will tonight and tomorrow have the rare opportunity to see the Venus transit - when the planet slowly crosses the face of the Sun - in a phenomenon that won't happen again for another 105 years.
The seven-hour transit, which starts just after 22.00 GMT (23:00 BST) on Tuesday will be observed by skywatchers from North America to the Pacific and East Asia.
The UK will catch the end of the natural wonder at sunrise on Wednesday.
The astronomical phenomenon occurs in pairs of events (the other half of this 'pair' happened in 2004), and these pairs are separated by about 105 years, meaning the next time it will occur will be in 2117.
According to the BBC, the reason for the long time in between each occurrence of pairs is due to the fact that the orbits of Venus and Earth do not lie in the same plane, and a transit can only occur if both planets and the Sun are situated on one line.
In the telescopic age, this process has only happened seven times: in 1631, 1639, 1761, 1769, 1874, 1882 and 2004.
So where do you have to be and when to see the transit? According to the Daily Mail, this is a basic guide (given in local times):
Tuesday:
12:10pm Honolulu
3:06pm Los Angeles
5:06pm Mexico City
6:04pm New York
Wednesday:
5:37am London
6:10 am Beijing
6:38am Cairo
7:10am Tokyo
8:16am Sydney
10:15am Auckland
The paper says that what you can see and for how long depends on what the Sun's doing in your region during that exact window, as well as the weather.
It says: "Those in most areas of North and Central America will see the start of the transit until the Sun sets, while those in Western Asia, the eastern half of Africa and most of Europe will catch the transit's end once the sun comes up.
"Hawaii, Alaska, eastern Australian and eastern Asia including Japan, North and South Korea and eastern China will get the whole show since the entire transit will happen during daylight in those regions."
The effect will appear as if the Sun has a "beauty spot", or some have described it as looking like a black disc.
Don't forget to buy your eclipse glasses before viewing...
See more weird and wonderful phenomena around the world:
%VIRTUAL-Gallery-124445%
