A Picturesque Venus Transit
Credit & Copyright:
David Cortner
The rare
transit of Venus across the face of the Sun earlier this month was one of the better-photographed events in sky history.
Both scientific and artistic images have been flooding in from the areas that could see the transit: Europe and much of Asia, Africa, and North America.
Scientifically, solar photographers confirmed that the
black drop effect
is really better related to the viewing clarity of the camera or telescope than the atmosphere of Venus.
Artistically, images might be divided into several categories.
One type captures the
transit in front of a highly detailed Sun.
Another category captures a double coincidence such as both Venus and an airplane simultaneously silhouetted, or Venus and the International Space Station in low Earth orbit.
A third image type involves a fortuitous arrangement of interesting looking clouds, as shown by example in the
above image
taken from
North Carolina,
USA.
There the distant orb of giant
Venus might have been mistaken, at first glance, for a small but unusually circular cloud.