The Women Warriors

[Yasmine]

a Unique Harmony Event

The Venus Transit of June 2004 during the Venus Retrograde phase is a rare cosmic event that this year is laden with spiritual significance. Richard Giles examines this remarkable phenomenon.

This year we'll experience a once-in-a-lifetime rare astrological and astronomical event. Approximately every 121 years, the planet Venus moves between the Sun and our line of vision so that Venus passes directly across the face of the Sun.

When the Moon passes across the face of the Sun it's called an eclipse. When a planet passes across the Sun's face it's more precisely known as an occultation.

On June 8th, 2004 we will be able to see the small shadow disc of Venus transit across the Sun maintaining its passage for about 6 hours. The last occultation was December 1882 and each time the occultation occurs it comes in twos, the second one being 8 years on.

The previous first one was December 1874. The other transit this century will be June 6th, 2012. Following that, the next time is 2117.



Rare Transit of Sun by Venus

By Joe Rao
SPACE.com's Night Sky Columnist
06 February 2004

Put a big red circle around June 8 on your calendar. On that day, you may have a chance to see a celestial event not witnessed by human eyes in 122 years when Venus crosses in front of the Sun.

Venus has been growing brighter and climbing higher into our evening sky lately. It has evolved into an "evening lantern" for those commuting home from work and school.

By the end of May 2004, however, Venus will be rapidly dropping back toward the Sun’s vicinity, ultimately to disappear as it makes the transition back into the morning sky. That transition day will be June 8.

Normally, Venus would pass unseen, hidden in the brilliant glare of the Sun. But not this time.

For on this Tuesday in June an Venus will making itself evident as a small black spot slowly moving across the solar disk. Portions of the hours-long transit will be visible from many locations around the world, including parts of Europe and America. Some folks will need to make travel plans, however, to see the show.

Rare opportunity

This is among the rarest of astronomical events. In fact, between the years 2000 BC and 4000 AD there are only 81 Venusian "transits," as astronomers call them.

Only five times have humans recorded the passage of Venus in front of the Sun (in 1639, 1761, 1769, 1874 and 1882), although it’s not impossible that a transit of Venus might have once been seen by chance in ancient times, near sunrise or sunset.

Possibly on such an occasion, some ancient observer with a keen eye, viewing the Sun on an unusually hazy day, might have glimpsed our sister planet's dark image (reporting it as "a dark mark on the Sun") on the solar disk.

Astronomer Joseph Ashbrook (1918-1980) wrote in "The Astronomical Scrapbook" (Sky Publishing Corporation, 1984): "For those who witness the transit of June 8, 2004, there comes the awesome thought that not a single human being remains alive that observed the last transit of Venus, in December, 1882."

There is some neat math involved in Venus transits, all related to the predictability of its orbit, which is closer to the Sun than the annual path of Earth.

The circumstances of the transits of Venus repeat themselves with great exactness after a period of 243 years. The intervals between individual transits (in years) currently go as follows: 8 + 121½ + 8 + 105½ = 243. In other words, a pair of transits may occur over a time span of just eight years, but following the second transit, the next will not occur again for more than a century.

Transits of Venus occurred on Dec. 9, 1874 and Dec. 6, 1882. The transit this June is the first one since 1882, but the next will occur 8 years later on June 6, 2012, although this future event will be visible in its entirety only from the Pacific Ocean and the extreme east coasts of Siberia, Japan and Australia (North Americans will see the opening stages before sunset).

Then it will be a long wait once again. On December 11, 2117, Venus will again pass in front of the Sun.

Transits do not occur each time Venus passes from our evening to our night sky because things have to be lined up just right.

When a transit occurs, the Sun, Venus and Earth are all in a direct line. But Earth and Venus do not orbit in exactly the same plane around the Sun, so often each planet is either above or below the location that would allow a transit.

Think of it this way: Place two hoops on the ground to represent the orbits of the planets. Place a tennis ball in the middle as the Sun. Now lift one portion of one hoop a few inches off the ground. Only where the opposite side of the lifted hoop touches the ground can you imagine a line that connects all three objects.


When Venus is in transit across the solar disk, the planet appears as a distinct, albeit tiny, round black spot with a diameter just 1/32 that of the Sun. This size is large enough to perceive with the unaided but properly protected eye.



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For the first time in more than one hundred years, the Earth’s sister planet Venus will transit the face of the Sun in 2004 and be visible over a select swath of the Earth. There have only been 52 such events since 2000 BCE and this event is cited by NASA as “among the rarest of planetary alignments.”

On June 8, 2004 Venus will be at inferior conjunction to the Sun, or between the Earth and Sun in a similar configuration to a Solar eclipse. For a little more than six hours, Venus will be seen to cross the lower limb of the Sun from the Earth.

First contact with the Sun: 5:19:57 Universal Time

Last contact with the Sun: 11:23:15 Universal Time

Astrologically, Venus will appear retrograde from the Earth at 17º Gemini (Tropical) or 23º Taurus (Sidereal), and her Solar crossing will take place against the backdrop of the constellation Orion, the warrior.

Of great significance is that this event provides the only opportunity to view the atmospheric “ring” of Venus, where the light of the planet’s surface will be visible. When Mercury transits the face of the Sun, he appears as a black dot moving across the Solar orb, while Venus will feature a halo of light around her dark edge. No one alive today has seen this phenomenon.

The transit will be entirely visible in the Pacific rim nations and in the northwest area of North America. The first visibility will take place at sunrise on the tip of South Africa.

This rare transit should be viewed in context with its cyclic occurrence. Transits of Venus occur in pairs eight years apart. Following the June 2004 event, Venus will again transit the Sun in June 2012. The record is as follows:

Dec. 1631 – Dec. 1639
June 1761 – June 1769
Dec. 1874 – Dec. 1882
June 2004 – June 2012
Dec. 2117 – Dec. 2125

What occurs during the period between the eight-year transit pairs is undoubtedly more significant than the events themselves.

Those with historical and metaphysical insights will note that intense periods of social and religious enlightenment took place at these times, which set into motion long-lived institutions for justice, social equality, and the eradication of disease.

In the realm of spirit, these periods also set the stage for intracultural discourse on spirituality and the dissemination of ancient knowledge.



There have been 52 transits of Venus across the Sun between 2000 B.C and 1882 A.D. Humans could only have noticed this event if they were watching the sun near the horizon at exactly the right time.

There are no historical records that suggest anyone was so lucky prior to 1639, although Montezuma may have spotted the 1520 transit while studying the Sun for portends.

Galileo Galilee in 1610 was the first human to actually see Venus as more than just a bright point of light in the sky. Johannes Kepler, meanwhile, was shaking up the world by his meticulous use of astronomical data assembled by Tycho Brahe.

What he discovered during these laborious hand calculations was that Venus would pass in front of the Sun on December 6th 1631, but the transit was not visible from Europe at all.

There is no known sighting of this transit in recorded history until the British Cleric, Jeremiah Horrocks and his friend William Crabtree spotted it on December 4, 1639, and that is only because Horrocks had mathematically predicted this transit using better data than Kepler had used. Here is what Horrocks had to say about the transit.
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