Sonson surprises NASA with an amazing photo of Venus

The Parker Solar Probe, NASA’s closest eye to the sun, whispered to Venus last summer for gravity assistance when it snapped a striking new image of the planet’s mysterious nocturnal surface and a surprisingly clear view of Venus. surface public.

The spacecraft, launched in 2018, is in the midst of its seven-year journey to study the Sun four million kilometers further, the closest any man-made object has ever walked. To do this, Parker Solar Probe must use the gravity of Venus to sharpen its orbit around the sun through a series of seven flying planes, and closer to each star closer to the star.

These beautiful passes are valuable opportunities to make interesting Venus photos.

The image taken by the Parker Solar Probe (WISPR) Wide-field Imager (WISPR) came during its third Venus flight in July 2020, and scientists were shocked. They expected WISPR to capture Venus’ thick, carbon dioxide-rich clouds that usually obstruct the view of the surface. But instead, the camera could see through the clouds and reveal the dark-colored shape of Aphrodite Terra, an elevated region of Venus near its equator that scientists say is about 85 ° F cooler than its surroundings.

NASA / Johns Hopkins APL / Naval Research Laboratory / Guillermo Stenborg and Brendan Gallagher

“WISPR has effectively captured the thermal emission of the Venusian surface,” Brian Wood, an astrophysicist and WISPR scientist at the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC, said in a statement from NASA. Wood noted that the image is similar to that taken by a Japanese Venus probe currently analyzing Venus that can capture light at near-infrared wavelengths.

The revelation can mean one of two things.

WISPR may have shown an unexpected ability to observe infrared light, which, if true, could unlock a new potential for scientists to study dust orbiting the sun. “This surprising observation sent the WISPR team back to the lab to measure the sensitivity of the instrument to infrared light,” Michael Buckley, communications manager at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, wrote in a NASA blog post.

But if this is not the case, the appearance of Aphrodite Terra may mean that WISPR has discovered a previously unknown opening in the thick Venusian clouds, a “window” that reveals portions of the planet’s surface.

To find out, mission teams planned another shot of Venus in the latest flying event last weekend. They plan to release more images and an analysis by the end of April.

WISPR’s image reveals other fascinating features of Venus. It detected a glowing edge in the upper atmosphere of the planet that scientists suspect could be ‘night glow’. Excluding Venus’ night side, the light luminescence can be caused by a collision of oxygen and nitrogen atoms coming from the side of the planet exposed to the sun.

Scientists are still studying the exact cause of the crunchy streaks of light that shoot across the frame of the image, the NASA report said. It could be charged particles, called cosmic rays, small grains of space dust that reflect sunlight, or ‘particles of material that are expelled from the structures of the spacecraft after being touched on the dust grains.’