The mission, which began in 2018, aims to study the sun and reveal some of its secrets. Over the course of seven years, the probe will travel into the Sun’s atmosphere and come closer to the surface of our star than any previous spacecraft.
Venus is key to the success of the probe. It is called a gravitational assistant because the spacecraft revolves around the planet to help it rotate around the earth and bring it closer to the sun.
The wide-field imager for the spacecraft’s WISPR instrument or Parker Solar Probe actively took images during the flyby and faced Venus on the night side or away from the sun. The image was taken 7,693 miles from the planet.
The bright streaks seen in the image are the result of space dust and cosmic rays, or charged particles, which reflect sunlight. These streaks seem a little different depending on how fast the probe travels.
There is also a noticeably dark feature in the center of the image. It is known as Aphrodite Terra, the largest plateau on Venus. The reason it looks dark in the image is because it is actually at a temperature that is 85 degrees Fahrenheit lower than the surrounding areas.
The WISPR instrument was created for testing so that it could collect images of the sun’s corona or the outer atmosphere into visible light. The imager can also get solar wind into action. Solar wind is a constant flow of excited particles that flow through the sun.
Looking back at Venus, WISPR surprised the team’s scientists. Instead of looking at the clouds, the surface of Venus appeared. Venus has an extremely thick atmosphere that was difficult to see with other spacecraft devices in the past.
U.S. in Washington DC. “WISPR effectively captured the thermal emissions of the Venetian surface,” Brian Wood, an astrophysicist at the Naval Research Laboratory and a member of the WISPR team, said in a statement.
What WISPR was able to do in visible light is similar to what Akatsuki captured on Venus in nearby infrared, Woods said.
Angelos v. Ralidas, a project scientist at WISPR at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, coordinated the imaging expedition with the Akatsuki Mission.
One of the two things is happening. Either WISPR is really sensitive to infrared light and picks it up when it passes Venus – which could open up the possibility of studying the dust around the Sun, or the imager is looking directly from Venus’s atmosphere and below the surface.
The Parker Solar Probe conducted a fourth flyby of Venus on February 20, passing 1,482 miles above the planet’s surface, so the team planned other observations of Venus’ nightside. That information should be received by the end of April, according to NASA.
Each pass of the Sun leads to breaking its own previous record, which is closer to one million miles than the previous pass. The pass will bring the probe 6.5 million miles from the surface of the sun.
“We’re really looking forward to these new images,” said Javier Peralta, an astrophysicist with the Akatsuki team. Peralta first suggested the Parker Solar Probe collaboration with the Japanese mission.
“If WISPR could detect thermal emissions from the surface of Venus and night glow – mostly from oxygen – on the planet’s organs, it could make a valuable contribution to the study of Venus’ surface.”
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