Full-light images from the Parker Solar Probe confirm an age-old astronomy legend.
Back in July 2020, the Parker Solar Probe snapped the first-ever images of the Venusian surface in full visible light. It took a similar set of images during a February 2021 flyby. Now,In the report, just published in, a team from the Naval Research Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University, and the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center described two types of light captured by the probe: surface and night glow.
Parker’s February images were also the first to fully capture the planet’s surface on its nightside. In the process, its cameras detected a wider range of light wavelengths, including some from the infrared spectrum. All together, the visuals help confirm earlier observations from missions like Venera 9 in the 1970s, Magellan in the 1990s, and Akatsuki in 2016. The new analysis concludes that previous temperature readings and topographical maps for Venus are more or less correct.
But amateur and professional astronomers should still gaze into the heavens to see Venus shimmer, the authors suggest. “The excellent dynamic range of the human eye might give the eye an advantage over electronic detectors in discerning something very faint near something so bright, but only reproducible images can provide a truly convincing detection,” they write in the study.
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