Transit of Venus starts Tuesday

Asia will have one of the best views of the Transit of Venus -— a planetary alignment that occurs when Venus passes between the Earth and the sun. A lunar eclipse will set the stage for this rare astronomical events–rarer even than the return of Halley’s Comet every 76 years–with Venus appearing as a distinct but tiny round black spot with a diameter just 1/32 that of the sun. The Venus Transit is one of a pair of rare phenomena which happen 8 years apart, with the dual events only taking place approximately every 105 years. Venus will transit west-to-east across the solar disk over a period of 6 hours and 40 minutes, passing through Greenland and far-northern portions of Canada, all of Alaska and Hawaii, central and eastern Asia, New Zealand and the eastern half of Australia.

Read more about Venus on Rappler; see a video on the Wall Street Journal; and see infographic on space.com