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Pete Lawrence of Selsey, UK, took the picture in broad daylight on May 26th. “We had beautiful clear blue skies in my part of the UK today, so I took advantage of the great weather to locate Venus before sunset. This beautiful planet has just slipped below 4% phase on it’s way to the historic transit on June 5/6.” The crescent of Venus could soon become a ring. When Venus is less than few degrees away from the sun, the horns of the crescent soetimes reach around and touch, producing a complete annulus. The effect is caused by sunlight-scatteriing particles in upper layers of Venus’s atmosphere. It is very difficult to observe, and often only black-belt astrophotographers are able to record the phenomenon.
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