The next transit of Venus, when the planet Venus will appear as a small, dark disk moving across the face of the Sun, will begin at 22:09 UTC on 5 June 2012, and will finish at 04:49 UTC on 6 June. Depending on the position of the observer, the exact times can vary by up to ±7 minutes. Transits of Venus are among the rarest of predictable celestial phenomena and occur in pairs eight years apart: the previous transit having been in June 2004, the next pair of transits will not occur until December 2117 and December 2125.
The entire transit will be visible from the western Pacific Ocean, northwesternmost North America, northeastern Asia, Japan, the Philippines, eastern Australia, New Zealand, and high Arctic locations including northernmost Scandinavia, Iceland and Greenland. In North America, the Caribbean, and northwestern South America, the beginning of the transit will be visible on 5 June until sunset. From sunrise on 6 June, the end of the transit will be visible from South Asia, the Middle East, east Africa and most of Europe. It will not be visible from most of South America or western Africa.