On June 5th the World watched a cosmic phenomenon that won’t be seen for another 105 years. Starting at 11pm GMT, Venus began to cross the face of the Sun allowing astronomers to get a rare insight into this relatively undiscovered planet. The planet’s 466°C heat is hot enough to melt lead and was also hot enough to destroy the Soviets Venera 7 spacecraft within 23 minutes of touch down. Scientists used the transit of Venus to learn more about the planet, but more importantly, to improve techniques that are currently used to examine the possibility of life on exoplanets in distant star systems.
We’ve uploaded some of the finest images from across the web, we hope you enjoyed the Venus transit as much as we did!
Jack is the content manager of planets.org.uk and is a keen amateur journalist. After completing a degree in astronomy from Newcastle University, Jack went on to develop this website out of his passion for space.