Introduction

During the present season of Venus transits across the disk of the Sun as viewed from the Earth (8 June 2004 and 5/6 June 2012) – after which this rare astronomical phenomenon will not occur for another 105½ years – astronomers and historians of astronomy may find the following bibliography useful.

Within each main section, the bibliographic entries are ordered chronologically – the earliest ones first and the most recent ones at the end.

In a future version the sections will be further subdivided into topical and geographical units.

A Note on Calendar Dates

The calendar dates for historical transits of Venus cited in the earlier literature can sometimes differ from those cited in the modern literature. This is due to the fact that

1. some countries still employed the Julian (or Old Style) calendar. Examples are England (and the English colonies) up to 1752 and Russia up to 1918.
2. some authors employed the ‘astronomical day’ that in contrast with the ‘civil day’ now in common use started not at midnight but at noon.