A visually spectacular guide to the history, science and significance of Venus's rare transits across the sun--the 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 alignments--since 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 context--for 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 material: 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 ceaseless, wondrous movements of the planets in our solar system.