NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has successfully captured its first images of the surface of Venus from space in the visible spectrum. We see the planet covered in thick clouds, as its surface is typically shrouded from sight, but in two recent flybys, Parker used its Wide-Field Imager (WISPR) to image the entire night-side in wavelengths of the visible spectrum and extended it into the near-infrared.
We can see that clouds block most of the visible light coming from Venus’ surface, but the very longest visible wavelengths, which border the near-infrared wavelengths, make it through. During its transit of Venus, WISPR managed to pick up a range of wavelengths from 470 nanometers to 800 nanometers, with some of that light being the near-infrared that cannot be seen by the human eye.
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Venus is the third brightest thing in the sky, but until recently we have not had much information on what the surface looked like because our view of it is blocked by a thick atmosphere. Now, we finally are seeing the surface in visible wavelengths for the first time from space,” said Brian Wood, lead author on the new study and physicist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC.
