Parker Solar Probe Imaging of the Night Side of Venus
Abstract
We present images of Venus from the Wide‐Field Imager for Parker Solar Probe (WISPR) telescope on board the Parker Solar Probe (PSP) spacecraft, obtained during PSP's third and fourth flybys of Venus on 2020 July 11 and 2021 February 20, respectively. Thermal emission from the surface is observed on the night side, representing the shortest wavelength observations of this emission ever, the first detection of the Venusian surface by an optical telescope observing below 0.8 μm. Consistent with previous observations at 1 μm, the cooler highland areas are fainter than the surrounding lowlands. The irradiances measured by WISPR are consistent with model predictions assuming a surface temperature of T = 735 K. In addition to the thermal emission, the WISPR images also show bright nightglow emission at the limb, and we compare the WISPR intensities with previous spectroscopic measurements of the molecular oxygen nightglow lines from Venus Express.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Feb 09, 2022
- Source ID
- 10.1029/2021gl096302
Entities
People
- Angelos Vourlidas
- Arnaud Thernisien
- Brendan R. Gallagher
- Brian E Wood
- Daniel Korwan
- Freddie Santiago
- Giada N. Arney
- Guillermo Stenborg
- Jacob Lustig-Yaeger
- Javier Peralta
- Mark G. Linton
- N. E. Raouafi
- Nathan Rich
- Noam Izenberg
- Phillip Hess
- Russell A. Howard
- Syed N. Qadri
Organizations
- Johns Hopkins University
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- United States Naval Research Laboratory
- University of Seville