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AKATSUKI's first shots of Venus taken during health check

Given the failure of injecting AKATSUKI into the planned Venus orbit, the project team and a dedicated investigation team led by the ISAS Director are now conducting extensive analyses of its cause. Various functionality and health checks of the probe are now underway. As a result of this activity, we obtained images of Venus at around 9 a.m. on Dec 9th (JST).

The project team switched on the long wave infrared camera (LIR), ultraviolet imager (UVI), and 1 micron camera (IR1) to take images of Venus at the distance of 0.6 milion km*. Venus was pictured with the angular size of about 1.2 deg**.

* Distance between Earth and the moon is 0.38 milion km
** Angular size of the moon from the ground is about 0.5 deg.

Long wave infrared camera (LIR) : 10 micron (wavelength)

Field of View: 12.4 deg x 16.4 deg
Number of pixels: 248 x 328

Venus with LIR

Venus taken with LIR (zoom)

Image with LIR (full)

[Right] Image with LIR (full image)

Ultraviolet imager (UVI): 365 nm (wavelength)

Field of View: 12 deg x 12 deg
Number of pixels: 1024 x 1024

Venus taken with UVI

[Left] Venus taken with UVI (zoom)

Image with UVI (full)

[Right] Image with UVI (full image)

N.B. Left image is artificially colored.

1 micron camera (IR1) : 0.9 micron (wavelength)

Field of View: 12 deg x 12 deg
Number of pixels: 1024 x 1024

Venus with IR1

[Left] Venus taken with IR1 (zoom)

Image with IR1 (full)

[Right] Image with IR1 (full image)

N.B. Left image is artificially colored.

Comparison of images in the same scale

Comparison of images in the same scale

N.B. Images are artificially colored (UVI image - blue; IR1 image - red)

December 10, 2010