Mercury transits are more frequent, happening about 13 times a century. The next one doesn’t occur until December 2117. The most recent transit of Venus was back in 2012. Venus transits are the rarest-happening twice every 108 years. This is because they are the only two planets in our inner solar system between our home planet and the Sun. From Earth, we can only see two planet transits: Mercury and Venus. What’s even more amazing is how rare these types of celestial events are. Image Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/SDO/Genna DubersteinĮvery now and again, Earth lines up with one of our neighbor planets so perfectly that we can watch the planet travel across the face of the Sun when we peer through a solar-safe telescope. Header Image: Composite image of the transit of Mercury as seen from Earth on May 9, 2016.
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