num_pages: 228
description: A visually spectacular guide to the history science and significance of Venuss rare transits across the sunthe perfect companion to the transit on June 5 2012 (the last one until 2117!)A transit of Venus is one of the rarest and most historically significant planetary alignmentssince the invention of the telescope in 1608 there have been only seven. A must-have for all sky-watchers Transit of Venus is packed with scientific and historical contextfor example astronomers calculated the distance from Earth to the Sun by studying the 1769 transit which Captain Cook famously sailed to uncharted Tahiti to observe. Here also is an unsurpassed breadth of visual NASA photographs of Venus illustrated observations of earlier transits and rarely published images of the instruments and expeditions made to study them. With this book the grandeur and history of transits will be accessible to everyone interested in the ceaselesswondrous movements of the planets in our solar system.
language: English
title: Transit of Venus: 1631 to the Present
publisher: The Experiment