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Credit & Copyright: D. Kiselman, et al.
(Inst. for
Solar Physics),
Royal Swedish Academy of
Sciences.
Explanation:
With Venus in transit at the Sun's edge on June 8th, astronomers
captured this tantalizing
close-up view
of the bright solar surface
and partially silhouetted disk.
Enhanced in the sharp picture, a delicate arc of sunlight
refracted through the Venusian atmosphere is
also visible
outlining the planet's edge against the blackness of space.
The arc is part of a luminous ring or atmospheric
aureole, first noted and offered as evidence that Venus
did posses an atmosphere following observations of
the planet's 1761 transit.
The image was recorded using the 1-meter
Swedish Solar Telescope
located on La Palma in the Canary Islands.
For the Institute for Solar Physics,
Dan Kiselman, Goran Scharmer, Kai Langhans, and Peter Dettori were
at the telescope, while Mats Lofdahl produced the final image.
Excellent movies of
the
transit - including one of the emergence of
Venus' atmospheric aureole - are
available from the
Dutch Open Telescope, also observing
from La Palma.
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Based on Astronomy Picture
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