A lot of attention has been paid to Venus and its recent transit across the face of the Sun. We couldn’t see it in Vancouver on account of the clouds yesterday, so we watched it live on CNN.com instead. To be honest, for something so incredibly rare, it was actually very boring, just a small black dot moving imperceptibly across a much bigger yellow dot. From our vantage point on Earth, we only get to see two planets enjoy such riveting action – Venus and Mercury (the latter makes its next transit in 2016). Since our neighbour Mars was probably feeling a little left out, we’re posting these magnificent (and very real) Martian sunrise shots to make it feel a little better (courtesy of the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter). If we were on Mars with powerful telescopes on a cloudless day in 1984, we’d have seen the last transit of our own planet across the Sun. We’ll next have the opportunity to do so in 2084, so let’s get busy sorting that out. Or…

TAKE ANOTHER BREAK