Orbiting observatory captures Venus in transit

Lisa Grossman, reporter

(Image: NASA/SDO, AIA)

If you caught last night's transit of Venus, you might have seen the sun as a smooth bright ball with a hole punched in it. NASA's orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) had a much more dramatic view.

The sun-watching space telescope, which launched in February 2010, has an unprecedented high-resolution perspective on the roiling cauldron of the sun's surface. This composite image shows Venus making its way across the sun above a looping solar prominence.

Because it can see the sun through several different filters, SDO could also see Venus approaching against the backdrop of the sun's outer atmosphere, the corona. The sun's disc looks larger through a hydrogen alpha filter than white light, so SDO saw Venus enter the disc of the sun twice in two minutes.

If you missed the transit, you're in good company. One member of the New Scientist space team was bedevilled by clouds, another tried unsuccessfully to spot it from a plane. That means we're all out of luck when it comes to seeing the transit from Earth: the next chance won't be until 2117. But on 21 December, the Cassini spacecraft will catch a transit from the viewpoint of Saturn.

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