Image Credit: NASA/SDO & the AIA, EVE, and HMI teams; Digital Composition: Peter L. DoveExplanation: An unusual type of solar eclipse occurred last year. 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.