The Parker Solar Probe, designed to conduct a detailed study of the Sun, has another advantage – it is capable of examining the planets as it passes through their orbits. During its seven-year mission, Parker will pass by Venus a total of seven times.
On July 11, 2020, a new exciting image of the planet Venus (during the third of the seven scheduled encounters of Parker with the Sun) was captured. This photo was taken by the Wide-field Imager for the Parker Solar Probe (WISPR) from a distance of 12,380 kilometers (7,693 miles).
WISPR's 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 this may be night light – light emitted as dioxygen is broken down by sunlight and recombined into molecules.
The dark area near the center of the image is Aphrodite Terra, the largest mountainous region on the surface of Venus. This geological feature appears dark due to the fact that the temperature is about 30 degrees Celsius, cooler than the surrounding land area.
“WISPR is tailored and tested for visible light observations. We expected to see clouds, but the camera clearly saw the surface,” explained Angelos Vourlidas, WISPR program scientist from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL).
This surprised researchers, who did not expect WISPR to see Venus' terrain features so clearly
This raises a fascinating question for astronomers – why was WISPR able to see so clearly through Venus' clouds? The two possibilities are that either WISPR can see better at infrared wavelengths than astronomers, or there is, or was, a thinner region of clouds, allowing the camera to see through the haze.
A second set of nighttime images of the planet Venus was captured by the WISPR team on February 20, 2021. Analysis of these images is expected to be completed by April of this year.
Information source: thenextweb.com
