Transit of Venus Across Sun, TRACE, 2004
NASA's TRACE satellite captured this image of Venus crossing the face of the Sun as seen from Earth orbit. This image also is a good example of the scale of Earth to the Sun since Venus and Earth are similar in size. A transit of Venus observed from Earth took place on June 8, 2004. The event received significant attention, since it was the first Venus transit after the invention of broadcast media. No human alive at the time had witnessed a previous Venus transit since that transit occurred on December 6, 1882. TRACE (Transition Region And Coronal Explorer) was a NASA space telescope designed to investigate the connections between fine-scale magnetic fields and the associated plasma structures on the Sun by providing high resolution images and observation of the solar photosphere and transition region to the corona. A main focus of the TRACE instrument is the fine structure of coronal loops low in the solar atmosphere. TRACE is a SMEX or SMall EXplorer mission, launched in 1998 and obtaining its last science image in 2010.
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Photo credit: © Photo Researchers / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
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