Solar probe surprises NASA with incredible image of Venus

The Parker Solar Probe, NASA’s closest eye to the sun, zoomed past Venus for a gravity assist last summer when it captured a striking new image of the planet’s mysterious night side, revealing a surprisingly clear view of the Venusian surface.

Launched in 2018, the spacecraft is in the midst of its seven-year journey to study the sun from 6 million kilometers away, the closest to a man-made object. To do this, Parker Solar Probe must use Venus’s gravity to stiffen its orbit around the sun through a series of seven flybys, pushing itself closer to the star with each pass.

Those scenic passes are valuable opportunities to capture intriguing photos of Venus.

The photo taken with Parker Solar Probe’s Wide-field Imager (WISPR) came during its third Venus flyby 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 to reveal the dark-hued form of Aphrodite Terra, an elevated region of Venus near the 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 from the Venusian surface,” Brian Wood, an astrophysicist and WISPR scientist at the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC, said in a NASA statement. Wood noted that the image was similar to that of a Japanese Venus probe currently analyzing Venus capable of capturing near-infrared wavelength light.

The revelation can mean two things.

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

But if not, the appearance of Aphrodite Terra could mean that WISPR discovered a previously unknown opening in the thick Venus clouds, a “window” that reveals parts of the planet’s surface.

To find out, mission teams scheduled more nighttime shots of Venus on its latest flyby last weekend. They plan to release more images and an analysis by the end of April.

WISPR’s image revealed other fascinating features of Venus. It discovered a glowing rim in the planet’s upper atmosphere that scientists suspect could be ‘nightglow’. Exclusive to the night side of Venus, the faint luminescence could be caused by a collision of oxygen and nitrogen atoms from the side of the planet exposed to the sun.

Scientists are still studying the exact cause of the wispy streaks of light that shoot across the frame of the image, according to the NASA post. They could be charged particles called cosmic rays, tiny particles of space dust that reflect sunlight, or “particles of material expelled from the structures of the spacecraft upon impact with those particles.”