There's still very little we know about Venus, including why it's become a 'hell' version of Earth. NASA's latest findings will give scientists hope to explore more about Venus.
NASA's Parker Solar Probe has captured this stunning visible light image of Venus for the first time. The findings reveal distinctive surface features such as continental regions, plains, and plateaus, as well as a glowing oxygen halo in the atmosphere that surrounds the planet.
The surface of Venus is usually hidden from view because their so-called hell realm is often shrouded in thick clouds. However, after two passes of the planet, Parker's probe using a wide-field imager, or WIPR, managed to capture the entire night side of Venus in the visible wavelength spectrum and extends into the near infrared. This is the type of light that the human eye can see.
Images of such a planet could help scientists learn more about the geology of Venus' surface, what minerals might be there, and the planet's evolution.
Quoted from the Daily Mail, Monday (2/21/2022) given that there are many similarities between Earth and Venus, this information can help scientists in their efforts to understand why one planet, Venus, is becoming inhospitable for habitation, while the other, Earth. , being an oasis for life.
"Venus is the third-brightest object in the sky, but to date we don't have much information about what its surface looks like because our view is blocked by the thick atmosphere," said Brian Wood, lead author of the new study and a physicist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington. DC.
"Now, we are finally seeing the surface in visible wavelengths for the first time from space."
The first WIPR image of Venus was taken in July 2020 as Parker began flying on his third trajectory, which the spacecraft uses to bend its orbit closer to the Sun.
WIPR is designed to see faint features in the Sun's atmosphere and winds, and some scientists think they might be able to use an imager to capture the cloud tops that covered Venus as Parker passed the planet.
"The goal was to measure cloud velocity," said WIPR project scientist Angelos Vourlidas, co-author of the new paper and researcher at the University of Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
But instead of just looking at the clouds, WIPR turned out to be looking at the planet's surface and revealing a faint glow. The captured images show a number of important features on the surface of Venus, such as the continental region of Aphrodite Terra, the Tellus Regio plateau, and the Aino Planitia plain.
Because the higher elevation areas are about 47 degrees Celsius cooler than the lower areas, they appear as dark patch-like appearances in the center of the brighter lowlands.
The images, combined into a video, look so striking that scientists turned on the camera again during the fourth pass in February 2021.
During the 2021 flyby, the orbits of the spacecraft line up perfectly for WIPR to depict the night side of Venus in its entirety.
"The pictures and videos fascinated me," said Wood.
In addition to the surface glow, this latest image of Venus shows a bright ring around the planet's edge caused by oxygen atoms emitting light in the atmosphere.
Called airglow, this type of light is also present in Earth's atmosphere, which is visible from space and sometimes from the ground at night.
Clouds block most of the visible light coming from Venus's surface, but the longest visible wavelengths, which border near-infrared wavelengths, make it through.
During the day, this red glow is lost in the bright sunlight reflected from the cloud tops of Venus. But in the dark of night, the WIPR camera was able to capture this faint glow caused by the tremendous heat radiating from the surface.
"The surface of Venus, even at night, is about 860 degrees. It's so hot that Venus's rocky surface glows like a piece of iron pulled from a fireplace," Wood said.
As it passes through Venus, WIPR picks up a wavelength range from 470 nanometers to 800 nanometers. Some of that light is near infrared, that is, the wavelengths we cannot see but feel as heat. Some of the other light, is in the visible range, between 380 nanometers and about 750 nanometers.
"We're excited about the scientific knowledge that the Parker Solar Probe has revealed so far," said Nicola Fox, divisional director for the Heliophysics Division at NASA headquarters.
"Parker continues to exceed our expectations, and we are excited that new observations taken during our gravity-assisted maneuver can help advance Venus research in unexpected ways."
The main purpose of the Parker Solar Probe is to study the Sun. But a flyby that crosses Venus is like a bonus that provides an opportunity to uncover Venus in addition to a mission to approach the Sun.