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Venus transits the Sun. For a few hours on June 5, 2012, Venus will appear as a dark, perfectly round disk in silhouette against the Sun. Contacts are the times at which the edges of the Sun and Venus just touch.

On June 5, 2012, (Eastern Time) Venus will cross the Sun’s disk in roughly 6 hours and 40 minutes. This transit will be visible in its entirety throughout the Western Pacific (Australia, Papua-New Guinea, Philipines, China, Korea, Japan, Siberia), but also in Hawaii and New Zealand, as well as in Alaska, Yukon, and parts of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. Elsewhere, only part of the phenomenon will be visible, if at all. In most of North America, the sun will set while the transit is in progress.

World visibility map of the 2012 June 5 transit of Venus. Courtesy of Fred Espenak, NASA/GSFC.

In North America, the first part of the transit will be the most interesting, as the tiny silhouette of Venus will take about 17 minutes to cross the edge of the Sun. In Montréal, contacts 1 and 2 will occur at 18:03:42 and 18:21:21 respectively, Eastern Time, with the Sun slightly more than 20 degrees above the horizon. In Québec City, contacts 1 and 2 will occur at 18:03:37 and 18:21:16 respectively. Elsewhere in Québec and Canada, the exact time of ingress will vary by several seconds, depending on the observer’s location. This table provides local circumstances of the transit for a number of cities across Canada. Everywhere in Eastern Canada, the sun will set (at 20:36 in Montréal) before Venus reaches mid-transit.