Transit Visibility
May 2004

The much hyped transit of Venus on June 8, 2004 will be visible by few. To view it, one must have a telescope, with a sun filter, be in the correct location on Earth at the correct time. If viewing it from an online site, one must assume a superimposed transit over the video as a possibility, ala Hollywood which superimposes a leaping Spiderman in front of a cityscape animation. The transit will be a tiny dot on the Sun, moving across its surface, hardly visible by naked eye due to the glare of the Sun.

Just a word of warning. The Venus transit will not be visible from SOHO. It will have the wrong perspective. It will be visible from Earth. This just shows how Earth biased these things are and how inconsequential they are to the heavens. Those of you prepared to view this on EIT will be disappointed. The link below gives you alternate on-line viewing sites. Courtesy of the evil NASA.

For 40 degrees North, Internal Egress and External Egress can be approximated as 11:05:58 UT and 11:25:56 UT, respectively. That´s all the information you require. Depending on your longitude, you may either see entire transit, partial transit in progress, or the transit will not be visible.
http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/transit/venus/city04-2.html
http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/transit/venus/Map2004-1.GIF