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Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
Go to topicThis movie shows the transit of Venus on 5-6 June 2012 as seen from SWAP, a Belgian solar imager onboard ESA's PROBA2 microsatellite. SWAP, watching the Sun in EUV light, observes Venus as a small, black circle, obscuring the EUV light emitted from the solar outer atmosphere - the corona - from 19:45UT onwards. At 22:16UT - Venus started its transit of the solar disk.
The bright dots all over the image ('snow storm') are energetic particles hitting the SWAP detector when PROBA2 crosses the South Atlantic Anomaly, a region where the protection of the Earth magnetic field against space radiation is known to be weaker.
Note also the small flaring activity in the bright active region in the northern solar hemisphere as Venus passes over. Towards the end, you can see a big dim inverted-U-shape moving away from the Sun towards the bottom-right corner. This is a coronal mass ejection taking off.