Venus Transit – seen from Hamburg

The picture shows the transit of Venus on June 6, 2012, taken at 06:27 CEST (= 04:27 UTC). Only twice a century Venus does line up with the earth and the sun, so that the Venus shadow appears as a tiny black dot in front of the sun. Venus follows Mercury as the second planet with its orbit around the sun, and it takes 224 days to complete one revolution. And because the earth moves on its orbit during this time, too, 584 days pass before Venus once again passes the earth and moves between the sun and the earth. However, since the orbit of Venus is inclined by 3.4 ° with respect to the earth's orbit, it usually passes below or above the sun past the earth. A visible passage is only possible if the two orbits oft Earth and Venus intersect on the imaginary line Earth - Venus - Sun where Venus passes the Earth. This is very rarely the case and only possible in the days around the 7th of June and around the 8th of December, because only then the orbits of the orbit seen from the earth in front of the solar disk. In principle, a Venus passage is to be seen wherever the sun is just above the horizon. In June, she does this in our latitudes for around 16 hours, in December only for about 8 hours. On June 6, 2012, only the final phase of the venus-transit shortly after sunrise in Central Europe was observed. You will not be able to observe the next transit of Venus until December 8, 2125.