VENUS TRANSIT A celestial occasion

Today's transit carries little scientific significance.
SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- Astronomy buffs hunched over their telescopes today, staring at the sky through dark filters as a black ball -- the planet Venus -- began creeping across the face of the sun in one of the rarest of celestial spectacles.
In Australia, one of the first places to glimpse the transit of Venus, the sight has special significance. This country's east coast was "discovered" by British explorer James Cook on his way home from viewing the 1769 transit in Tahiti.
Planetariums the world over -- from India's eastern city of Bhubaneswar to New York City -- set up telescopes with the solar filters needed to watch the event, while two observatories in Spain's Canary Islands planned to use the transit to recalculate the distance between the earth and sun.
A blue sky over Sydney gave about 40 people looking through telescopes at the city's observatory a clear view of the transit as it began mid-afternoon. Telescopes were set up on lawns and inside, while an image of the transit was projected onto a white screen for safe viewing.
"Venus is just marching into the sun," said Andrew Constantine, an education officer at the observatory. "It's very exciting."
But in many places clouds obscured the show, with observatories in Japan reporting rain. The overcast skies in Hong Kong didn't stop more than 100 people from lining up at the Hong Kong Space Museum where several telescopes were waiting.
Party time
Keith London, an amateur astronomer who lives at the foot of the Mt. Lofty Ranges on the edge of the Outback in South Australia state, was hosting a transit party, inviting his neighbors to watch the show through his telescope thanks to a filter he had shipped from the United States specially for the event.
He said he would hold off on sipping too much wine until the sun had set.
"You must never drive a telescope under the influence," he cautioned.
Transits of Venus occur twice -- eight years apart -- about every century, when the sun, Venus and Earth precisely line up. Past transits -- the last pair were in 1874 and 1882 -- helped astronomers calculate Earth's distance from the sun. This time, today's transit and one in 2012 carry little scientific significance, but they've still stirred up plenty of interest.
In Thailand, hundreds of people gathered at observatories across the country, only to be disappointed by cloudy skies. Many people in the mostly Buddhist country believe in astrological implications of planetary movements, especially rare ones.
"Venus eclipsing the sun means that Venus will gain huge power, but the power will have a negative effect on finance and love," Phingyo Phongchareon, a well-known astrologer, was quoted as saying in an interview with the Matichon newspaper.
People in Africa, Europe and the Middle East would see the entire transit, while the northeast corner of the United States and Canada would see only the tail end of the event, said Darren Osborne, education spokesman with Australia's Commonwealth Science & amp; Industrial Research Organization.
Australians would not get to see the whole six-hour, 12-minute show. The sun will have set Down Under before the transit finishes. The event started at about 1:13 a.m. and ends at 7:26 a.m. EDT, give or take a few seconds.
"It's not as beautiful or exciting as a solar eclipse, but given the historical significance of it -- through Cook -- and given that it's been over 120 years since it last happened, I think it's a pretty interesting thing to see," Osborne said.
Around the world
In India, about 5,000 people were expected to turn up at the Pathani Samanta Planetarium in Bhubaneswar, where organizers had brought in several telescopes and binoculars fitted with solar filters.
The two observatories in the Canary Islands were recalculating the distance between the earth and the sun, but "don't expect anything new," said Luis Cuesta of the Canary Islands Astrophysics Institute.
In the Danish capital, Copenhagen, scientists expected hundreds of people to watch Venus' transit from 20 telescopes set up outside the Tycho Brahe observatory.
"We expect people will keep passing by throughout the day," said observatory spokesman Micael Linden-Voernle. "And the weather in the eastern part of the country is going to be just fine."
In New York, the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History planned to set up a bank of telescopes in Central Park to give people a view once the sun rises above Manhattan's skyline.