Venus Transit Over Caspian Sea

A distorted Sun with a “blemish” on its face rises over Caspian Sea in this multi-exposure of the 2012 Transit of Venus taken from Suvelan, near Baku, Azerbaijan. During the transit —the last one until 2117— Venus crossed between Earth and the Sun, so that observers could see a black dot gliding over the solar disk. The Sun appears squashed in this frame because more of its light is being bent by the thick layers of Earth’s atmosphere.