Venus transit 2012 - PROBA-2 view
Date: 07 June 2012
Copyright: ESA/ROB
This movie shows the transit of Venus on 5-6 June 2012 as seen from SWAP - an extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) telescope - that is onboard the ESA microsatellite PROBA-2. The black circle where Venus obscures EUV light emitted from the Sun's corona can be clearly seen.
PROBA-2 orbits the Earth about 14.5 times each day, which means that it circled our planet nearly 4 times during the transit, which lasted about 6 hours and 40 minutes. The constant change in the viewing angle of PROBA-2 during the transit means that in the video Venus appears to move up and down as it crosses the Sun.
The bright dots that appear sporadically in the image are energetic particles that hit SWAP's detector. Since PROBA-2 is in a low-Earth orbit (at an altitude of 700km), it is usually protected from such energetic particles by Earth's magnetic fields. However, whenever PROBA-2 crosses the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA) - a region where the protection of the Earth's magnetic field against space radiation is weaker - some energetic particles are recorded.