Parker Solar Probe, Take the Solar Plunge |
Parker Solar Probe, Take the Solar Plunge |
Dec 25 2005, 12:33 AM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2454 Joined: 8-July 05 From: NGC 5907 Member No.: 430 |
Any serious plans to send a probe into the Sun to explore its depths as far as possible?
What would help a probe last as long as it could and how deep could it get? Could it even radio or laser out any data? What about a Sun skimmer? -------------------- "After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance. I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard, and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft." - Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853 |
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Jun 5 2017, 05:46 PM
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8785 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
Here's a link to the instrumentation description. Obviously the mission is real heavy on particle & field observations, and I don't know whether the coronal imager (WISPR) is capable of resolving Venus in any useful way. Still, I'm sure they'll record data of some sort during the gravity assists.
Also, since the spacecraft has officially now been named, this topic has been re-titled. -------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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Jun 6 2017, 09:36 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2530 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 321 |
It took me a while to track down the specs of WISPR… many webpages with vague descriptions of it with links to other webpages with other vague descriptions of it. Finally, I got here:
http://www.affects-fp7.eu/helcats-meeting/...PR_vbothmer.pdf If I read it correctly, WISPR would not be capable of providing much useful Venus information. It is a "white light" telescope with one wide bandpass of 475-755 nm (blue to near-IR). That is going to show a very blank Venus with none of the interesting wavelengths (UV or thermal IR). The peak resolution is 4.3 arcmin per pixel which is extremely low resolution by the standards of most of the spacecraft imaging missions we think of. Basically, it's a whole sky camera, like what might be used to take a picture of the Milky Way in the Earth's night sky. For Venus to look interesting to this camera, it would have to be zooming right over Venus's day side at close range, and even then it would be pretty much guaranteed to show a colorless blank image. I don't think in the best of circumstances WISPR could do any original Venus science. |
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