August 26, 2013 at 3:15 pm

Picture of the Day: The Eclipse of Venus

by twistedsifter

 

THE ECLIPSE OF VENUS

 

venus planetary eclipse Picture of the Day: The Eclipse of Venus

Image Credit: NASA/SDO & the AIA, EVE, and HMI teams
Digital Composition by: PETER L. DOVE

 

Selected as NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day on August 20, 2013, is this fascinating digital composition by Peter L. Dove. APOD explains:

Usually it is the Earth’s Moon that eclipses the Sun. Last June, most unusually, the planet Venus took a turn. Like a solar eclipse by the Moon, the phase of Venus became a continually thinner crescent as Venus became increasingly better aligned with the Sun.
 
Eventually the alignment became perfect and the phase of Venus dropped to zero. The dark spot of Venus crossed our parent star. The situation could technically be labeled a Venusian annular eclipse with an extraordinarily large ring of fire. Pictured above during the occultation, the Sun was imaged in three colors of ultraviolet light by the Earth-orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory, with the dark region toward the right corresponding to a coronal hole. Hours later, as Venus continued in its orbit, a slight crescent phase appeared again. The next Venusian solar eclipse will occur in 2117.

 

 

picture of the day button Picture of the Day: The Eclipse of Venus