This amazing image of the night side of the planet Venus from a distance of 12,380 kilometers has been captured by the Wide Field Imager for Parker Solar Probe, or WISPR.
The capture occurred unexpectedly during the mission's third Venus gravity assist on July 11, 2020.
WISPR
WISPR is designed to take images of the solar corona and inner heliosphere in visible light, as well as images of the solar wind and its structures as they approach and fly by the spacecraft.
WISPR is designed and tested for visible light observations, so they expected to see clouds, but the camera looked directly at the surface. So, effectively captured thermal emission from the surface of Venus, detected a bright rim around the planet's edge that may be nightglow: light emitted by oxygen atoms high in the atmosphere that recombine into molecules on the night side.
The prominent dark feature in the center of the image is Aphrodite Terra, the largest mountainous region on the surface of Venus. The feature appears dark due to its lower temperature, about 30 ºC colder than its surroundings.
On January 29, 2020, the trajectory of the Parker Solar Probe took the spacecraft to a distance of approximately 18.6 million kilometers from the Sun, more than 5 million kilometers closer than previous flybys, so this, broke his record.
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The news
Surprising image of the night side of Venus from a distance of 12,380 kilometers thanks to the Parker Solar Probe
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.