The global visibility of the 2012 transit is illustrated with the world map in figure 3 . The entire transit (all four contacts) is visible from northwestern North America, Hawaii, the western Pacific, northern Asia, Japan, Korea, eastern China, Philippines, eastern Australia, and New Zealand. The Sun sets while the transit is still in progress from most of North America, the Caribbean, and northwest South America. Similarly, the transit is already in progress at sunrise for observers in central Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and eastern Africa,. No portion of the transit will be visible from Portugal or southern Spain, western Africa, and the southeastern 2/3 of South America.

Notes on the data

Planetary transits start when the planet’s disk is externally tangent with the sun (ingress, exterior). From then, the planet may be discerned as a little black dent in the solar limb, gradually growing bigger until the entire planet is seen on the solar disk (ingress, interior). During the next five to six hours, the planet will traverse the sun’s disk until the planet’s disk will touch the opposite solar limb (egress, interior). The transit ends when the planet’s disk is externally tangent with the sun (egress, exterior).