Rainbow Venus
© Sadegh Ghomizadeh

Something special is happening to Venus. The brightest of all planets is hanging low in the western sky at sunset, and if you look at it with a backyard telescope, you'll see that it is a slender 4% crescent. But that's not the special part.

What's special is, Venus looks like a rainbow.

Sadegh Ghomizadeh took the picture from Tehran, Iran, on March 10th. It shows the view through his 11-inch Celestron. "The seeing was poor, but Venus was still bright and beautiful," he says.

Venus resembles a rainbow because Earth's atmosphere acts like a prism. When Venus is near the horizon, refraction separates the red crescent from the blue. The crescent is so thin, the splitting of colors is obvious. Later this month, Venus will disappear into the glare of the spring sun, so catch the rainbow planet while you can!

More images: from P-M Hedén of Vallentuna, Sweden; from Alan Simpson of Renfrew, Scotland; from Frederic Caron of Victoriaville, Qc, Canada