TODAY’S historic Venus transit was a marathon event lasting nearly seven hours, unfolded in the morning sky all across the country from 5.41am till 9.50am, enthralling the astro enthusiasts for 105 years.

The transit of Venus, where the planet Venus passes directly between the Earth and the Sun.

Scientists and amateur astronomers alike celebrated the arrival of the Transit of Venus, peering up to the skies to watch a dark black spot slide over the surface of the Sun.

"Venus is known as the goddess of love, but it's not the type of relationship a person'd want," an astronomer said. "This is a look-but-don't-touch kind of relationship."

Venus treks across the sun’s face from Earth’s perspective today (June 5; June 6 in much of the EasternHemisphere), marking the last such Venus transit until 2117.

Transits of Venus happen in pairs, eight years apart, with more than a century between cycles. During Tuesday’s pass, Venus took the form of a small black dot slowly shifting across the northern hemisphere of the sun.

Few people alive today will be around to see the next transit, which makes the rare celestial sight a premier event in the astronomical and skywatching communities. The Venus-sun show began around 5.41am and end at roughly 9.50am in Pakistan Wednesday, with the exact timing varying by a few minutes from point to point around the globe.

According to the "Egyptian book of Death", during the transit of Venus all the magical spells on the earth will inverse. Pakistan meteorological department suggested that the cyclone of June 5 in Pakistan could be the chain of  this thought.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRlLooVYNmY&feature=endscreen&NR=1

First Contact

The transit officially commences when the leading edge of Venus first touches the solar disk, an event astronomers call “Contact I” or “ingress exterior.” This occured at Tuesday’s transit, completing a 2004-2012 pair, began at 6:09 p.m.

Second contact and beyond

Next up is “Contact II,” or “ingress interior” — the moment when Venus moves fully onto the sun’s face. This will happen 18 minutes after Contact I.

If you’r viewing the transit through a good telescope, you may see a dark teardrop form, briefly joining Venus’ trailing edge and the solar disk just before Contact II. This so-called “black-drop effect” bedeviled efforts in 1761 and 1769 to measure the Earth-sun distance by precisely timing Venus transits from many spots around the globe.

Scientists once thought the black-drop effect was caused primarily by Venus’ thick atmosphere, or by viewing through Earth’s ample air.

But astronomers also observed it in images of a Mercury transit snapped by a NASA spacecraft in 1999. Mercury has an extremely tenuous atmosphere, so the prevailing wisdom had to go. “Our analysis showed that two effects could fully explain the black drop as seen from space: the inherent blurriness of the image caused by the finite size of the telescope, and an extreme dimming of the sun’s surface just inside its apparent outer edge,”.

After Contact II, Venus continues its long, slow and slanting trek across the sun’s face. The next major milestone comes at roughly 6:25 p.m. PDT (0125 GMT on Wednesday; switching to Pacific time now, as the sun will have set in eastern North America), when Venus reaches the exact center of itstransit path — a point known as “Greatest Transit.”Earth’s so-called sister planet will keep traveling across the solar disk for another three hours or so.

The beginning of the end for the transit comes at about 9:30 p.m. PDT (0430 GMT Wednesday) with “Contact III,” when Venus’ leading edge touches the boundary of the solar disk.

Contact III, also known as “egress interior,” represents the last moment when Venus is still entirely contained on the sun’s face, and it offers another chance to witness the black-drop effect. The last-in-a-lifetime show ends 18 minutes later with “Contact IV,” or “egress exterior,” when Venus finally moves off the solar disk.Where and how to watch

As the times of these various events indicate, much of the world won’t be able to observe the whole transit as much of Europe will witness only the last stages of the transit as the sun is coming up.

Large portions of South America and Africa will miss out entirely. However, some regions of the globe will be treated to the entire spectacle. These include eastern Asia, eastern Australia, New Zealand and the western Pacific, as well as Alaska, northern Canada and almost all of Greenland.

Before you even attempt to observe the transit of Venus, a warning: NEVER stare at the sun through small telescopes or with the unaided eye without the proper safety equipment. Doing so can result in serious and permanent eye damage, including blindness. (with addition from AP)