Parker Solar Probe, Take the Solar Plunge Options

[palebutdot]

https://www.twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield/statu...027345660207104

[palebutdot]

NASA Parker Solar Probe view of Earth

Earth Image Dataset
https://wispr.nrl.navy.mil/data/rel/fits/CAL1/20180925/

Context
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/p...ks-back-at-home

Attached File(s)

 EarthPSP.mp4 ( 1.21MB ) Number of downloads: 1709

 

[marsbug]

Hey guys, a huge slew of fascinating papers on Parker Solar Probe results - it looks like the near Sun environment is as complex and fascinating as anyone could wish for: https://iopscience.iop.org/issue/0067-0049/246/2

[palebutdot]

View of The Milky Way from NASA's Parker Solar Probe
Source (Encounter 4):
https://wispr.nrl.navy.mil/wisprdata

Attached File(s)

 PSPE4.mp4 ( 2.16MB ) Number of downloads: 1751

 

[palebutdot]

New renderings of Earth Encounter 2:
https://vimeo.com/420599154
https://vimeo.com/436115251

[Steve G]

Parker probe has been busy spying on comet NEOWISE. I still haven't seen it myself.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/n...-comet-neowise/

[MahFL]

Parker probe has been busy spying on comet NEOWISE. I still haven't seen it myself.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/n...-comet-neowise/

I've spent the last 3 days unsuccessful too. Evening viewing starts for me tomorrow here in Florida.

[Explorer1]

Fantastic image of Venus released from this flyby, seeing through to the surface.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2021/p...g-view-of-venus

This surprising observation sent the WISPR team back to the lab to measure the instrument’s sensitivity to infrared light. If WISPR can indeed pick up near-infrared wavelengths of light, the unforeseen capability would provide new opportunities to study dust around the Sun and in the inner solar system. If it can’t pick up extra infrared wavelengths, then these images — showing signatures of features on Venus’ surface — may have revealed a previously unknown “window” through the Venusian atmosphere.

[Lucas]

Fantastic image of Venus released from this flyby, seeing through to the surface.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2021/p...g-view-of-venus

With guest appearance by Orion on the bottom right

[JohnVV]

for those using Celestia and want to fallow along, i put up a SPICE enabled add on
-- there might still be a few bugs it is still a work in progress

https://celestia.space/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=20883

[Ian R]

A couple of rough-and-ready animations from the flyby:

The two best frames, showing the surface:

[scalbers]

I wonder which IR wavelengths would be involved as it could indicate whether one could see either heat emissions, or sunlight scattered through the Venusian clouds. In this case we're looking at the night side, so it must be the heat emissions. The surface of Venus is so hot though that its IR emissions would peak at a relatively short wavelength, that would actually overlap somewhat with the solar spectrum around roughly 3 microns. A look at the atmospheric transmittance spectrum would be of interest.

[JRehling]

On Venus, the temperature varies very linearly with altitude. The atmosphere itself radiates in IR, but the surface is still much, much denser than even Venus's dense atmosphere, so what we primarily see is a measure of the altitude. It's been established that the thermal IR signature for the surface corresponds to about 1 micron. 2+ microns moves the observation vertically upward into the atmosphere, and examines structure in clouds. (I was pleased, in early 2020, to join the ranks of amateurs who have imaged the surface of Venus looking through the nightside clouds at 1 micron.)

What makes this more complicated is that there are windows in the atmosphere (of course, primarily CO2) that pass IR better than others. The planned emissivity observations that would take place in any of the proposed remote sensing missions to Venus would take advantage of these.

I have to say that I'm quite surprised that the PSP imager achieved this level of signal pertaining to the surface of Venus. The detail is certainly there in certain narrow bands, but with a wide-band filter I would expect the noise to overwhelm the signal. I'm perplexed that PSP would achieve such a clear signal by accident, because it's quite difficult to do when trying to do so. One advantage for PSP vs. an earthbound observer is that from certain vantage points close to Venus and over its nightside, one can avoid much of the glare from the crescent of the dayside. Even a very slim crescent at the intense illumination of Venus's clouds can glare and ruin the image over much of the nightside.

[Ian R]

All frames showing the nightside {Version 2.0}:

[JTN]

What's going on with all the streaks? These pictures make space seem very... not-empty.

This is the press release explanation, but I still have questions:

Bright streaks in WISPR, such as the ones seen here, are typically caused by a combination of charged particles — called cosmic rays — sunlight reflected by grains of space dust, and particles of material expelled from the spacecraft’s structures after impact with those dust grains. The number of streaks varies along the orbit or when the spacecraft is traveling at different speeds, and scientists are still in discussion about the specific origins of the streaks here.

If it's dust and/or cosmic rays, why don't approximately all deep-space images have this sort of artifact? (I assume PSP isn't shedding orders of magnitude more material than other spacecraft at this point in its orbit.)

Is there something special about the instrument or observation that makes it pick this stuff up? (I know it has a very wide FOV, where most imagers we're used to are very narrow, but I'm failing to understand why that would have this effect.)

In some frames, particularly the fourth frame in Ian R's latest (reproduced here), the tracks are curved, which makes me think they can't be cosmic rays (should be fast = straight)? But that seems like a lot of dust. What is going on in this picture? (I assume the more orderly streaks are curved star trails, so presumably the spacecraft was changing attitude during the observation.)