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Influence of Venus topography on the zonal wind and UV albedo at cloud top level: The role of stationary gravity waves

Bertaux, Jean-Loup; Fedorova, A.; Lebonnois, S. +6 more

Based on the analysis of UV images (at 365 nm) of Venus cloud top (altitude 67 ± 2 km) collected with Venus Monitoring Camera on board Venus Express (VEX), it is found that the zonal wind speed south of the equator (from 5°S to 15°S) shows a conspicuous variation (from -101 to -83 m/s) with geographic longitude of Venus, correlated with the underl…

Potential vorticity of the south polar vortex of Venus

Hueso, R.; Sánchez-Lavega, A.; García Muñoz, A. +1 more

Venus' atmosphere shows highly variable warm vortices over both of the planet's poles. The nature of the mechanism behind their formation and properties is still unknown. Potential vorticity is a conserved quantity when advective processes dominate over friction and diabatic heating and is a quantity frequently used to model balanced flows. As a s…

Variability of the nitric oxide nightglow at Venus during solar minimum

Montmessin, F.; Marcq, E.; Royer, E. M.

We present results from a NO airglow inversion method based on Venus Express data acquired from 2006 to 2010, during the last solar minimum period. We retrieve an altitude of 114 ± 10 km for the emission peak of the NO layer, with an associated scale height of 20 ± 10 km and an average limb brightness of 59.3 kR with a standard deviation of 63 kR.…