Quote:
Originally Posted by Maksutov
One item of clarification re the transits of Venus: for the past couple of thousand years they have been occurring mainly in either June or December. This is due to the way the nodes of Venus' orbit line up as seen from Earth. For example the last non-June/December transit was on May 23rd in the year 1526 CE. This June/December pattern will continue for many more thousands of years, unless there's an event that perturbs either Venus and/or the Earth.
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That 1526 transit was in May only because it was the last one before the calendar change in 1582. If we extrapolate the Gregorian calendar backward, the transit falls on June 2. Working farther backward, we find more transits fall in June and December:
1518/05/26 becomes 1518/06/05
1396/11/23 becomes 1396/12/01
1283/05/23 becomes 1283/05/30
and here we have the last transit not in June or December, even without the calendar change.
The next such is 4791/01/02.