April 24, 2021
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, currently studying the sun, has observed the entire dust ring that encircles the sun along Venus’ orbit. It is the first complete view of this dust band from any spacecraft.
This isn’t some sort of flare – or glare – or any kind of jet or ray. It’s the first complete view of a ring of dust moving around the sun in the orbit of the planet Venus. The 4 frames of the image were first captured on August 25, 2019. Image via NASA/ Johns Hopkins APL/ Naval Research Laboratory/ Guillermo Stenborg and Brendan Gallagher.
Did you know that Venus has a ring? Well, sort of. Not a ring of icy or dusty “moonlets” or grains like those surrounding the gas and ice giants in our solar system, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Instead, it’s a circumsolar ring of dust, that is, a ring of dust moving around the sun along Venus’ orbit. Now, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has sent back the first complete view of this ring, the space agency rep