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Amazing close-up of Venus captured by NASA Parker Solar Probe - CNN

Amazing close-up of Venus captured by NASA Parker Solar Probe - CNN

Amazing close-up of Venus captured by NASA Parker Solar Probe - CNN
Feb 24, 2021 1 min, 0 secs

Over the course of seven years, the probe will travel through the sun's atmosphere and come closer to the surface of our star than any spacecraft before it.

Venus is instrumental to the probe's success.

This was the third Venus gravity assist for the Parker Solar Probe.

The spacecraft's WISPR instrument, or Wide-field Imager for Parker Solar Probe, was actively taking images during the flyby and captured the nightside, or side facing away from the sun, of Venus.

Either WISPR is actually sensitive to infrared light and is picking that up when it passes Venus -- which could open up possibilities to study dust around the sun, or the imager is looking through the atmosphere of Venus and right down to the surface.

Parker Solar Probe just conducted its fourth flyby of Venus on February 20, passing 1,482 miles from the planet's surface, so the team planned another set of observations of the Venusian nightside.

Peralta was the first to suggest a Parker Solar Probe collaboration with the Japanese mission.

"If WISPR can sense the thermal emission from the surface of Venus and nightglow — most likely from oxygen — at the limb of the planet, it can make valuable contributions to studies of the Venusian surface."

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