Could ancient Chinese sunspot observers have seen a transit of Venus?
Chinese astrologers kept close track of the sun, especially large sunspots that could be seen at sunrise and sunset before the sun became too bright to see with the unaided eye. The earliest records of sunspot sightings began around 800 BC., but their observations apparently began in earnest around 167 BC. Astronomers Zhuang and Wang (1988) compiled a list of over 270 sunspot sightings from ancient Chinese, Korean and Japanese records. A comparison by Wittman and Zu (1987) and Yao and Stephenson (1988) of sunspots and the expected Venus transits shows no examples of even near-misses.
