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And the NASA news this week only solidifies my position.
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The space organization shared a new photo that NASA’s Parker solar probe captured of Venus as the probe used the planet’s gravity to travel to its final destination – the sun.
The black and white image was taken 7,693 miles from Venus. To the layman, it looks pretty cool: there’s a planet and stars and maybe some kind of movement going on. But, honestly, I’ve seen better, especially in the last few weeks.
According to NASA, however, the picture is full of surprises. As Space.com puts it, Venus “looks nothing like what scientists expected to see.”
What?!
In a statement released this week, scientists at NASA explained that the onboard camera on the Parker solar probe, known as the Parker Solar Probe Wide Field Imager (or WISPR), captured the image of a bright edge around the edge of the planet. it may be the nighttime glow and the planet’s Aphrodite Terra, the largest highland region on the Venusian surface, which is known to be about 85 degrees cooler than its surroundings.
It’s exciting and all, but according to NASA, they only expected to see a few clouds.
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This means that the WISPR device that we projected into space doesn’t quite work the way we thought it would. Instead of just capturing visible light, the images suggest the camera can also pick up wavelengths of near-infrared light, which could allow scientists to conduct additional research on the dust around the Sun and in the solar system. .
Or – and this is where I’m a little freaked out – it could mean that changes are occurring in the normally thick, cloudy Venusian atmosphere that Earthlings were not yet aware of.
“Either way,” said Angelos Vourlidas, the scientist who helped develop WISPR, “exciting scientific opportunities lie ahead.”
My thoughts exactly.
The last photos came from the survey of Venus in July 2020 by the probe. The probe passed the planet again earlier this month, on February 20, and the WISPR team planned to capture more images to draw a conclusion. However, it will be necessary to wait until the end of April for the images to return to Earth.
See, there’s another thing I don’t care about space: really slow download speeds.
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