The photograph was taken throughout last night, NASA says

Jun 6, 2012 16:02 GMT  ·  By

Experts from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), in Greenbelt, Maryland, have just released a composite image showing Venus transiting the Sun. The photo was put together from multiple images collected between June 5 and 6.

All data were collected by the Atmospheric Imager Assembly (AIA) instrument aboard the NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). The telescope kept a constant eye on the Sun throughout the rare astronomical event, which occurs in pairs separated by more than a century of inactivity.

Venus carried out its last solar transit in 2004. The next pair will take place in December 2117 and December 2125, respectively. Very few instances of the event were observed with modern equipment.

This is why today's transit was imaged with a large number of telescopes and spacecraft, both on the ground and in orbit. The European Space Agency even used the Venus Express satellite it has in orbit around our neighboring worlds. Results should begin to pour in shortly.