Our sister planet Venus’ cloud-covered surface is generally only seen from orbit using advanced radar and/or infrared imaging. According to NASA, the Parker Solar Probe utilised its Wide Field Imager for Parker Solar Probe (WISPR) on two recent flybys to record Venus’ whole nightside in the visible spectrum.
According to NASA, the WISPR photos reveal characteristics on Venus’s surface such as the Aphrodite Terra continental area, the Tellus Regio plateau, and the Aino Planitia plains. The satellite agency points out that because higher altitude locations are around 85 degrees F colder than lower places, they appear as black patches among the lighter lowlands.
A paper detailing the probe’s imaging is reported in a new paper appearing this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
“Venus is the third brightest thing in the sky, but until recently we have not had much information on what the surface looked like because our view of it is blocked by a thick atmosphere,” said lead author on the new study and physicist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC, Brian Wood. “Now, we finally are seeing the surface in visible wavelengths for the first time from space.”
In July 2020, WISPR took its first photos of Venus. According to NASA, WISPR was designed to identify faint characteristics in the solar atmosphere and wind, but it was anticipated that as the Parker Solar Probe passed Venus, it would also picture cloud tops veiling the planet.
“The objective was to measure the speed of the clouds,” WISPR project scientist Angelos Vourlidas, co-author on the new paper and researcher at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, said in a statement.
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