WISPR was designed to see faint features in the solar atmosphere and wind, and some scientists thought they might be able to use WISPR to image the cloud tops veiling Venus as Parker passed the planet. The first WISPR images of Venus were taken in July 2020 as Parker embarked on its third flyby, which the spacecraft uses to bend its orbit closer to the Sun. “Now, we finally are seeing the surface in visible wavelengths for the first time from space.”Ĭredits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Joy Ngĭownload this video and more imagery in HD formats from NASA Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio Unexpected Capabilities “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,” said Brian Wood, lead author on the new study and physicist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC. Given the similarities between the planets, this information can help scientists on the quest to understand why Venus became inhospitable and Earth became an oasis. Such images of the planet, often called Earth’s twin, can help scientists learn more about Venus’ surface geology, what minerals might be present there, and the planet’s evolution. “Parker continues to outperform our expectations, and we are excited that these novel observations taken during our gravity assist maneuver can help advance Venus research in unexpected ways.” “We’re thrilled with the science insights Parker Solar Probe has provided thus far,” said Nicola Fox, division director for the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters. A luminescent halo of oxygen in the atmosphere can also be seen surrounding the planet. The images, combined into a video, reveal a faint glow from the surface that shows distinctive features like continental regions, plains, and plateaus. But in two recent flybys of the planet, Parker used its Wide-Field Imager, or WISPR, to image the entire nightside in wavelengths of the visible spectrum – the type of light that the human eye can see – and extending into the near-infrared. Smothered in thick clouds, Venus’ surface is usually shrouded from sight. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has taken its first visible light images of the surface of Venus from space. 9, 2022, in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, is adding to scientists’ understanding of the planet likened as Earth’s twin.

A full analysis of the images and video, published on Feb. So that’s why sometimes she’s called our evil twin.In the time since Parker Solar Probe captured its first visible light images of Venus’ surface from orbit in July 2020, a subsequent flyby has allowed the spacecraft to gather more images, creating a video of Venus’ entire nightside. So why is Venus called Earth’s evil twin? So NASA and ESA are embarking on a decade of Venus, where together we’re sending three missions where we’re all going to learn more about how Venus formed, how it evolved, and why it’s so different from Earth. So it is a crazy place, but really interesting.Īnd we really want to understand why Venus and Earth turned out so differently. And those clouds are made of sulfuric acid. The temperatures on the surface of Venus are over 900 degrees Fahrenheit, and then Venus is covered in a 15-mile-thick layer of clouds.

In fact, it’s so hot on Venus that you can melt lead. But on Venus, what happened is its large, thick carbon dioxide atmosphere is driving a greenhouse effect. I like to say that somewhere along the way, something good happened on Earth. Some people like to say Venus went bad or something went wrong. So you would think that they would have turned out very, very similar.īut what happened is somewhere along the way, they went two very different paths. So they were formed in the same part of the solar system, made out of the same materials. Venus is in fact our closest neighbor to Earth. They also formed in the same inner part of the solar system.

Venus and Earth are sometimes called twins because they’re pretty much about the same size.

Nasa images planet venus