The “Venus Transit” is not a dance move done while listening either to the original version of “Venus” by Shocking Blue or the covered version of the same song by Bananarama. It is the path of the planet Venus in front of the sun that will occur late this afternoon until past sunset tonight in central New York.  Even though this happened in June 2004, it will not happen again in your lifetime. The next Venus Transit will occur in the year 2117. Here are the details that you need to know:

When will central New York see this today?
The path of Venus begins to cross the sunshine at 6:09pm until it's completely inside the sun’s oval at around 6:28pm. Venus will remain inside the sunshine’s circle until after the sun has set here locally. Here is a wonderful graphic animation that will show you the exact position of Venus as it is crossing the sun’s plane.

How can I safely view this?
One should never directly stare into the sunshine at any point. Sunglasses do not provide sufficient protection, either. It is critical that you do not use binoculars or a telescope to stare directly at the Venus Transit. This can lead to blindness.

To safely view the Venus Transit, one can easily make a “do-it-yourself” binocular projection here. You can also use a #14 shade of wielding glasses. The Syracuse Astronomical Society and the MOST (Museum of Science & Technology) have information on what they are doing to gather both outside and inside.

Will the weather hold for viewing starting at 6:09pm through sunset?
Our forecast for this period is not perfect. We are going to be dealing with cloudy periods mixed with some sunshine and even a risk for some passing scattered showers during the course of today. As opposed to yesterday when cloud cover was much thicker and deeper, at least late this afternoon and evening have a higher chance for some breaks in the overcast to lead to some partial clearing. For the very latest on where rain showers are occurring, click Interactive Doppler Radar here. For the latest on where clouds are, click here.

If it is cloudy, can I still watch the Venus Transit live?
There are two great websites that will be covering this celestial event live:
NASA has a great website here.
SLOOH has a viewing website here.

What will the Venus Transit look like?
If you did not click on it above, here is a wonderful graphic animation that will show you the exact position of Venus as it is crossing the sun’s plane.

Here are 51 pictures of what the June 2004 Venus Transit looked like. It will look similar.

Here is an ABC news story of the June 2004 Venus Transit.

If you safely take pictures of this locally, please post pictures on CNYcentral’s Facebook page!

Become my facebook friend here by “liking” my fan page, and "follow" me on Twitter here (@PeteWeatherBeat). For more on your weather forecast, click on “Weather” and then the “Live Triple Doppler Radar” tab on our weather page. Make sure you refresh the Doppler radar to see the very latest information, as well. Furthermore, we have our new Interactive Doppler Radar on our website. You can zoom down to street level with Interactive Doppler Radar. You are in total control of where the radar can zoom in. Give it a try. In addition, you may tune to NBC Weather Plus on Time Warner Cable digital channel 133 or over the air 3.3 to get the very latest weather updates locally and nationally.