What Earth Looks Like From Venus During Rare Sky Show

This colorized image of Venus was recorded by the Jupiter-bound Galileo spacecraft shortly after its gravity assist flyby of Venus in February of 1990. Galileo's glimpse of the veiled planet shows structure in swirling sulfuric acid clouds.

There is no question that countless numbers of people will be watching the transit of Venus on Tuesday; a very striking celestial phenomenon that has been seen only once in the last 129 years and won't happen again until December in the year 2117. 

But as we prepare to watch the planet cross the face of the sun from our Earthly vantage point, have you ever wondered what the view would be like if we were o Venus? Obviously, that answer would be "what view?" since Venus is cloaked with a perpetual overcast. 

But if it were somehow possible to get a view of the night sky from Venus right now, there would appear a uniquely stunning sight: our home planet Earth.

Flammarion's dream

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, one of the most popular astronomy writers was Frenchman Nicolas Camille Flammarion. He was a prolific author of more than fifty books, as well as also publishing the magazine L'Astronomie, starting in 1882, as well as maintaining his own observatory at Juvisy-sur-Orge, France. In his 1894 book "Popular Astronomy," Flammarion speculated about the possibility of life on Venus. Then he added:

"The inhabitants of Venus see us shining in their sky like a magnificent star of the first magnitude, soaring in the zodiac, and showing motions similar to those which the planet Mars presents to us."

In fact, the view would be even more magnificent than Flammarion could have ever imagined.