Articles and Essays

  • What is the Transit of Venus? There have been fifty-two transits of Venus across the face of the Sun since 2000 B.C., but until 1643 A.D., no human was known to have observed this astronomical rarity.
  • Image Gallery Many images depicting the Transit of Venus can be found in the collections of the Library of Congress. For this Web presentation, we selected several historic engravings and drawings as well as a printing of an article published by Benjamin Franklin in the journal of the Royal Society of London.