The Parker Solar Probe, designed to make a detailed study of the Sun, has another advantage - it is able to look at planets as it passes through their orbits. During its seven-year mission, Parker will pass by Venus a total of seven times.
On 11 July 2020, a fascinating new image of the planet Venus was taken (during the third of Parker's seven planned encounters with the Sun). This image was taken by the Wide-field Imager for the Parker Solar Probe (WISPR) from a distance of 12,380 kilometers (7,693 miles).
The WISPR camera was designed to image the Sun's inner heliosphere (which extends far into space) in visible light, as well as to Study the solar wind.
This new image of Venus shows a bright ring bordering the edge of the planet. Researchers believe that this may be night light - the light that Transmitted by as oxygen, Split by sunlight and recombines into molecules.
The dark area near the centre of the image is the Aphrodite Terra, the largest mountainous area in the surface of Venus. This geological feature appears dark due to the fact that the temperature is about 30 degrees Celsius. Lower than the surrounding area of the ground.
"WISPR is adapted and tested for visible light observations. We expected to see clouds, but the Camera he clearly saw the surface", explained Angelos Vourlidas, a WISPR project scientist from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL).
This came as a surprise to the researchers, who did not expect WISPR to see the Features of the soil of Venus.
This raises a fascinating question for astronomers - why WISPR Available to see so clearly through the clouds of Venus? The two possibilities are that either WISPR can See better at infrared wavelengths than was thought by the astronomersor there is, or was, a subtler cloud area, Enable to the camera to see through the fog.
A second set of night images of the planet Venus was recorded by the WISPR team on 20 February 2021. The analysis of these Image courtesy of is expected to have completed by April this year.
Source of information: thenextweb.com
