Glory captured on Venus. Image courtesy of ESA
A rainbow-like feature known as a ‘glory’ has been captured by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Venus Express orbiter, the first time such an image has been captured on another planet.
Just like a rainbow, glories are formed when light from the sun is refracted through cloud droplets, with a rainbow arching over the sky, and a glory appearing as a series of coloured concentric rings centred on a bright core.
While Earth’s atmosphere is rich with water droplets, Venus’ atmosphere is thought to contain droplets rich in sulphuric acid, and “by imaging the clouds with the Sun directly behind the Venus Express spacecraft, scientists hoped to spot a glory in order to determine important characteristics of the cloud droplets” said the ESA.
The scientists were successful in capturing an image of a glory, which spanned 1200km, at the height of the Venus cloud tops, around 70km above the planet’s surface, on 24 July 2011.
