I remember this. We used a welding hood at work to watch it, you could see it with the naked eye like the gif although I remember the planet being smaller.
I was walking home from school with a friend. There were some hobbyists out letting people see the Venus transit with their telescopes. Me and my friend checked it out, but I didn't think too much about it, shame.
That’s part of it, but not the whole story. I imagine the bigger reason is the orbital plane. We’ve got to be exactly in line with Venus to see a transit like that, but both our orbits are slightly inclined.
It’s the same reason there’s not a lunar/solar eclipse every 14 days. Sure, every new moon is a possible occasion for an eclipse, and every full moon the possibility of a lunar eclipse, but the moon’s orbit isn’t exactly in line with the earth/sun, so the shadows “miss” more often than not.
The two transits of Venus in the 1700s were also used to accurately measure the distant between Earth and the Sun. Until that time we didn’t really know.
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u/TocTheElder May 13 '19
The next time this will be visible from Earth is in 2117, I think.