Trivandrum: Kerala’s sky gazers who longed to watch Venus pass by like a moving beauty spot across the face of the sun, were disappointed. All thanks to the monsoon.

“Last week I received a mail from Cosmos  magazine  about the Venus transit. Since then I was eagerly waiting to see it. It is a rare phenomena which will happen only twice in a lifetime. I was very sad that I could not watch it today,” said Rahul, a stargazer.

Transit is an event when planet Venus or Mercury passes across the face of the Sun as seen from Earth. Transits are very rare. They come in pairs eight years apart, but between pairs there is a gap of either 105.5 years or 121.5 years. So the next transit will be seen only after 100 years.

"Venus is about 100th  of the diameter of the Sun, so it's essentially just a black spot superimposed on the disc of the sun, but it moves across from one side to the other. The last transit which occurred in June 2004 was visible across India. The next transit is expected to appear in 2117," said an official from Regional Science Centre and Planetarium, Calicut.

Planetariums in Kerala, including the Priyadarshini planetarium in the capital, were crowded with school children and astronomers from 6 o’ clock in the morning to watch this rare and amazing astronomical spectacle. The curious astronomy buffs were soon disappointed as the monsoon took centre stage.                   

“We got up early morning to watch it through a filtered telescope. Our teachers told that the last transit occurred in 2004 and this will be the second of the current pair of transits, so there is going to be a very long wait until the next one. We are sad that we were not lucky enough to experience the transit in our lifetime. But my friend told me that the videos will be available on the internet,” said a disappointed student.