Parker Solar Probe: A surprising image of the night side of Venus, taken during a flyby of the plane
Parker Solar Probe: A surprising image of the night side of Venus, taken during a flyby of the planet last July, showing much more surface detail than expected. Way to overachieve, little space robot. (I went to the PSP launch back in August 2018, so I have a soft spot for this particular space robot.) Here’s the original image caption, since I don’t think I can summarize what’s going on here very well: When flying past Venus in July 2020, Parker Solar Probe’s WISPR instrument, short for Wide-field Imager for Parker Solar Probe, detected a bright rim around the edge of the planet that may be nightglow — light emitted by oxygen atoms high in the atmosphere that recombine into molecules in the nightside. The prominent dark feature in the center of the image is Aphrodite Terra, the largest highland region on the Venusian surface. Bright streaks in WISPR, such as the ones seen here, are typically caused by a combination of charged particles — called cosmic rays — sunlight reflected by grains of space dust, and particles of material expelled from the spacecraft’s structures after impact with those dust grains. The number of streaks varies along the orbit or when the spacecraft is traveling at different speeds, and scientists are still in discussion about the specific origins of the streaks here. The dark spot appearing on the lower portion of Venus is an artifact from the WISPR instrument. Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Naval Research Laboratory/Guillermo Stenborg and Brendan Gallagher -- source link
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