>>12768113That WISPR can do this comes as a complete surprise to the Parker team, according to Angelos Vourlidas, the WISPR project scientist from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). This device is “tailored and tested for visible light observations,” said Vourlidas in the NASA statement, saying they “expected to see clouds, but the camera peered right through to the surface.”
“WISPR effectively captured the thermal emission of the Venusian surface,” added Brian Wood, an astrophysicist and WISPR team member from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, in the NASA release.
WISPR, it would seem, has an unexpected capacity, namely the ability to detect near-infrared wavelengths of light. If confirmed, NASA says this could alter the scope of the missions to include investigations of dust around the Sun and also within the inner solar system.
