Venus Transit, 2012


Venus Heading for Transit. Venus is approaching closer and closer to its transit of the Sun. It appeared on June 1, 2012 in the field of view of SOHO's wider field coronagraph (LASCO C3). It will cross in front of the Sun as seen from Earth on June 5-6 moving from left to right. The other less bright object moving right to left in the early part of the clip is Mercury. With coronagraphs, the Sun is blocked by an occulting disk, seen here in blue, so that SOHO can observe the much fainter features in the Sun's outer atmosphere, called the corona. The actual size of the Sun is represented by the white circle.


Size: 3000px × 3000px
Photo credit: © Photo Researchers / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No

Keywords: 1, 1st, 2012, 21st, astronomical, astronomy, body, c3, celestial, century, close-, coronagraph, deep, disk, field, heavenly, june, lasso, object, occulting, planet, science, sky, solar, space, sun, transit, venus, wider