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Sulfuric acid vapor and sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere of Venus as observed by the Venus Express radio science experiment VeRa

Pätzold, M.; Bird, M. K.; Häusler, B. +4 more

The Venus Express radio science experiment VeRa provided more than 900 neutral atmospheric profiles between the years 2006 and 2014. About 800 of these could be used for an analysis of the radio signal absorption at X-Band (wavelength: 3.6 cm), which is mainly caused by sulfuric acid vapor within the Venus atmosphere. The absorptivity profiles wer…

Venus upper atmosphere revealed by a GCM: II. Model validation with temperature and density measurements

Lefèvre, Franck; Lebonnois, Sebastien; Schubert, Gerald +5 more

An improved high resolution (96 longitude by 96 latitude points) ground-to-thermosphere version of the Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace (IPSL) Venus General Circulation Model (VGCM), including non-orographic gravity waves (GW) parameterization and fine-tuned non-LTE parameters, is presented here. We focus on the validation of the model built from a c…

Determination of the Venus eddy diffusion profile from CO and CO₂ profiles using SOIR/Venus Express observations

Vandaele, A. C.; Robert, S.; Mahieux, A. +6 more

We present a study of the SOIR/Venus Express CO₂ and CO profiles in order to constrain the eddy diffusion profile in the Venus mesosphere (80 to 130 km of altitude). We compute the mean number density profile of both species, and the hydrostatic temperature based on the CO₂ mean density profile. We use a 1D-photochemical/diff…

Modeling of observations of the OH nightglow in the Venusian mesosphere

Bougher, S. W.; Parkinson, C. D.; Yung, Y. L. +4 more

Venus airglow emissions have been unambiguously detected in the wavelength ranges of 1.40-1.49 and 2.6-3.14 µm in limb observations by the Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer (VIRTIS) onboard the Venus Express (VEx) spacecraft and are attributed to the OH(2-0) and OH(1-0) Meinel band transitions. The integrated (limb slant path…

Venus night-side photometry with "cleaned" Akatsuki/IR2 data: Aerosol properties and variations of carbon monoxide

Sato, Takao M.; Satoh, Takehiko; Horinouchi, Takeshi +2 more

We have developed a novel method called Restoration by Simple Subtraction (RSS) to clean and restore the Venus night-side disk in "contaminated" Akatsuki/IR2 images at 2.26 and 1.735 µm. Light spread from the intense day crescent is cancelled by subtracting a near-simultaneous 2.32-µm image (scaled) from a 2.26-µm image. Net-cont…