Saturday, June 9, 2012

Venus on the Edge...

A few days ago we had the rare transit of Venus across the sun (as seen from Earth, of course).  This image, captured by the Hinode spacecraft, a joint Japanese/U.S./U.K. mission.  It is in orbit around the Earth, so it saw the transit of Venus just as us surface-dwellers did.

This image shows Venus just as it crossed one edge of the sun.  If you click on the photo to enlarge it, you can clearly see a bright ring all the way around Venus – sunlight refracting through Venus' carbon dioxide rich atmosphere. 

Photo from APOD, of course...

1 comment:

  1. That now qualifies as the brightest wallpaper I've ever had on my desktop. May need sunglasses to find the icons now. :)

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