Wednesday, June 06, 2012

Venus Crosses the Sun

Like millions of others in the New York City metro area, we were thwarted from seeing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to watch Venus cross in front of the sun in an eclipse.

However, NASA was all over the event, and they recorded the transit from multiple locations, including the Solar Dynamics Observatory in space.



The transit is helpful to scientists who are looking for planets outside our solar system since one of the ways that astronomers look for those planets is by seeking out changes in brightness due to eclipses.

UPDATE:
Here's an even more impressive video - showing some of the same images as above, but in multiple wavelengths:

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