NASA has published a video and photographs of the surface of Venus. The Parker Solar Probe captured these images during a visit last year.

According to the experts, the first photographs of this type could aid in understanding more about the solar system's most Earth-like planet.

The photographs were taken by the US space agency's Parker Solar Probe (PSP) during two flybys of Venus in 2020 and 2021. However, the full research was published on Wednesday in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The announcement was also made on NASA's website.

"Venus is the third brightest thing in the sky," said Brian Wood, a physicist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC, who was also the study's lead author. "But until recently, we didn't have much information on what the surface looked like because our view of it was blocked by a thick atmosphere." For the first time, we are seeing the surface in visible wavelengths from space."

 

Parker Solar Probe has taken its first visible light images of the surface of Venus from space! ????

The planet is smothered in thick clouds, but during recent flybys of the planet Parker’s cameras peered through to see the surface: https://t.co/FNWNLwVSNI#VisionsOfVenus pic.twitter.com/itp1tcB4YN

— NASA Sun & Space (@NASASun) February 9, 2022

The probe discovered "a faint glow from the surface that indicates distinguishing features like continental regions, plains, and plateaus," according to NASA, as well as a "luminescent halo of oxygen in the atmosphere" around the planet. To capture the glow created by the planet's extreme heat, the probe employed a spectrum that ranged from 470 to 800 nanometers, nearing infrared.

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Parker Solar Probe’s just-released images of Venus — the first visible light images of the planet’s surface from space: pic.twitter.com/gDLOXOYXxL

— NASA Goddard (@NASAGoddard) February 10, 2022

“The surface of Venus, even on the nightside, is about 860 degrees,” Wood said, using the Fahrenheit scale. “It's so hot that the rocky surface of Venus is visibly glowing, like a piece of iron pulled from a forge.”