Venus approaching inferior conjunction as it overtakes Earth on its inner, faster orbit. Very rarely it passes directly across the face of the Sun, giving us a transit. Mostly it passes above or below the Sun, but usually too close to be seen.

But on 25 March 2017 it passed a whole 8° above the Sun, giving a rare opportunity to photograph it at the exact moment of conjunction.
Left image: 2017 Feb 04, the disk was 37% illuminated, its diameter 32 arc-seconds; photographed through Red, Green and Blue filters.

Centre: 2017 Feb 27, disk now 18% illuminated, diameter 46 arcseconds as it approaches closer to Earth; this time Red, Green and Ultraviolet filters used (UV mapped to the Blue channel).

Right: the moment of inferior conjunction 2017 Mar 25, 16.36UT, 8 deg 17′ north of the Sun. Now just 1% of the disk is illuminated, it has grown to 59 arcseconds in diameter, and its distance from Earth is just over 26 million miles. Only the Red filter was used for this image.

All images taken with a Takahashi TS-120 refractor and a Flea3 U3-13S2M camera, each image being a stack of 200 frames processed with AutoStakkert and RegiStax. North is up in each image.