Editing 2004 transit of Venus (section)

{{Use dmy dates|date=July 2021}}
{{short description|Astronomical event on 8 June 2004 in which Venus could be seen in front of the Sun}}
[[File:Venus Transit 2004.JPG|thumb|299x299px|right|A photograph taken at 15:39 Hong Kong time (07:39 UTC) from Tuen Mun, New Territories, Hong Kong.]]
[[File:VenusTransit20040608145750.jpg|thumb|A projection of the 2004 [[Transit of Venus]] as seen from [[Mumbai|Mumbai, India]] at 14:57:50 [[Indian Standard Time|IST]] (09:27:50 [[Coordinated Universal Time|UTC]]) clicked using a [[Sony Mavica|Sony Digital Mavica MVC-FD73]] camera by Dhaval Mahidharia.|300x300px]]
A [[transit of Venus]] was observed from Earth on 8 June 2004. The event received significant attention, since it was the first Venus transit after the invention of broadcast media. No human alive at the time had witnessed a previous Venus transit since that transit occurred on [[1882 transit of Venus|6 December 1882]] in the 19th century.

The [[ESO|European Southern Observatory]] (ESO) and the [[EAAE - European Association for Astronomy Education|European Association for Astronomy Education]] (EAAE) launched the VT-2004 project, together with the Institut de Mécanique Céleste et de Calcul des Éphémérides (IMCCE) and the Observatoire de Paris in France, as well as the [[Astronomical Institute of Czech Academy of Sciences|Astronomical Institute of the Academy of Sciences]] of the Czech Republic. This project had 2,763 participants all over the world, including nearly 1,000 school classes. The participants made a measurement of the [[astronomical unit]] (AU) of 149 608 708&nbsp;km ± 11 835&nbsp;km<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso0433/|title=ESO – eso0433 – Summing Up the Unique Venus Transit 2004 (VT-2004) Programme|date=2 November 2004|publisher=The [[European Southern Observatory]]}}</ref> which had only a 0.007% difference to the accepted value.