The European Space Agency captured a breathtaking image of Venus' "glory."
A glory is a rainbow-like feature, an ESA news release reported. Both rainbows and glories occur when sunlight shines through cloud droplets. Glories are more concentrated than rainbows and are composed of a series of rings with a bright core.
This is the first glory that has been captured outside of Earth, New Scientist reported.
A glory requires two characteristics: the cloud particles are spherical, and therefore most likely liquid droplets, and they are all of a similar size, the news release reported.
Glories are often spotted around the shadows of aircrafts; they can only be detected if the viewer is standing directly below the Sun, the news release reported.
Venus' glory is caused by droplets of sulphuric acid. In the planet's atmosphere. The image was captured through clouds with the Sun shining directly behind Venus. The team captured the image of the glory in hopes of learning more about the planet's cloud droplets.
This glory was located about 70 kilometers above the planet's surface and is believed the be 1,200 kilometers wide. ESA's Venus Express orbiter, that snapped the picture on July 24 2011, was about 6,000 kilometers away from the scene.
The variations of brightiness in the glory's rings are not what would be expected in an cloud made up of only sulphuric acid mixed with water, this suggests there is other unknown chemistry present in the droplets.
"One idea is that the cause is the 'UV-absorber', an unknown atmospheric component responsible for mysterious dark markings seen in the cloud tops of Venus at ultraviolet wavelengths. More investigation is needed to draw a firm conclusion," the news release reported.
The unexpexted appearcance of the glory could be a result of "elemental sulphur or mixed in with ferric chloride ," New Scientist reported.
"This could be the so-called unknown absorber that people had been trying to identify for years," Wojciech Markiewicz at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, told New Scientist. "We cannot say for sure, but we can say that this is one more piece of the puzzle for the whole thing."
