NASA’s New Views of Venus’ Surface From Space

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has taken its first visible light images of the surface of Venus from space. Smothered in thick clouds, Venus’ surface is usually shrouded from sight. 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. The images, combined into a video, reveal a faint glow from the surface that shows distinctive features like continental regions, plains, and plateaus. A luminescent halo of oxygen in the atmosphere can also be seen surrounding the planet. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Scientists: Brian Wood (U.S. Naval Research Laboratory) Giada Arney (NASA/GSFC) Brendan Gallagher (U.S. Naval Research Laboratory) Phillip Hess (U.S. Naval Research Laboratory) Angelos Vourlidas (Johns Hopkins University/APL) Producer: Joy Ng (KBRwyle) Writer: Mara Johnson-Groh (Wyle Information Systems) Animator: Steve Gribben (Johns Hopkins APL) Music credits: “Tides” and “Subsurface” by Ben Niblett [PRS] and Jon Cotton [PRS] from Universal Production Music