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Clouds and Hazes of Venus
Titov, Dmitrij V.; Ignatiev, Nikolay I.; Wilson, Colin F. +2 more
More than three decades have passed since the publication of the last review of the Venus clouds and hazes. The paper published in 1983 in the Venus book summarized the discoveries and findings of the US Pioneer Venus and a series of Soviet Venera spacecraft (Esposito et al. in Venus, p. 484, 1983). Due to the emphasis on in-situ investigations fr…
Composition and Chemistry of the Neutral Atmosphere of Venus
Marcq, Emmanuel; Vandaele, Ann Carine; Parkinson, Christopher D. +1 more
This paper deals with the composition and chemical processes occurring in the neutral atmosphere of Venus. Since the last synthesis, observers as well as modellers have emphasised the spatial and temporal variability of minor species, going beyond a static and uniform picture that may have prevailed in the past. The outline of this paper acknowled…
Venus: The Atmosphere, Climate, Surface, Interior and Near-Space Environment of an Earth-Like Planet
Head, James W.; Taylor, Fredric W.; Svedhem, Håkan
This is a review of current knowledge about Earth's nearest planetary neighbour and near twin, Venus. Such knowledge has recently been extended by the European Venus Express and the Japanese Akatsuki spacecraft in orbit around the planet; these missions and their achievements are concisely described in the first part of the review, along with a su…
Mean winds at the cloud top of Venus obtained from two-wavelength UV imaging by Akatsuki
Imamura, Takeshi; Takagi, Masahiro; Yamazaki, Atsushi +9 more
Venus is covered with thick clouds. Ultraviolet (UV) images at 0.3–0.4 microns show detailed cloud features at the cloud-top level at about 70 km, which are created by an unknown UV-absorbing substance. Images acquired in this wavelength range have traditionally been used to measure winds at the cloud top. In this study, we report low-latitude win…
Venus Interior Structure and Dynamics
Sotin, Christophe; Smrekar, Suzanne E.; Davaille, Anne
No two rocky bodies offer a better laboratory for exploring the conditions controlling interior dynamics than Venus and Earth. Their similarities in size, density, distance from the sun, and young surfaces would suggest comparable interior dynamics. Although the two planets exhibit some of the same processes, Venus lacks Earth's dominant process f…
ESA's Planetary Science Archive: Preserve and present reliable scientific data sets
De Marchi, G.; Besse, S.; Vallat, C. +15 more
The European Space Agency (ESA) Planetary Science Archive (PSA) is undergoing a significant refactoring of all its components to improve the services provided to the scientific community and the public. The PSA supports ESA's missions exploring the Solar System by archiving scientific peer-reviewed observations as well as engineering data sets. Th…
Three-Dimensional Turbulence-Resolving Modeling of the Venusian Cloud Layer and Induced Gravity Waves: Inclusion of Complete Radiative Transfer and Wind Shear
Spiga, A.; Lebonnois, S.; Lefèvre, M.
Venus' convective cloud layers and associated gravity waves strongly impact the local and global budget of heat, momentum, and chemical species. Here we use for the first time three-dimensional turbulence-resolving dynamical integrations of Venus' atmosphere from the surface to 100-km altitude, coupled with fully interactive radiative transfer com…
H+/O+ Escape Rate Ratio in the Venus Magnetotail and its Dependence on the Solar Cycle
Fedorov, A.; Barabash, S.; Futaana, Y. +3 more
A fundamental question for the atmospheric evolution of Venus is how much water-related material escapes from Venus to space. In this study, we calculate the nonthermal escape of H+ and O+ ions through the Venusian magnetotail and its dependence on the solar cycle. We separate 8 years of data obtained from the ion mass analyz…
Nightside Winds at the Lower Clouds of Venus with Akatsuki/IR2: Longitudinal, Local Time, and Decadal Variations from Comparison with Previous Measurements
Hueso, Ricardo; Sánchez-Lavega, Agustín; Imamura, Takeshi +16 more
We present measurements of the wind speeds at the nightside lower clouds of Venus from observations by JAXA’s mission Akatsuki during 2016, complemented by new wind measurements from ground-based observations acquired with the TNG/Near Infrared Camera Spectrometer (NICS) in 2012 and IRTF/SpeX in 2015 and 2017. The zonal and meridional components o…
Fine Vertical Structures at the Cloud Heights of Venus Revealed by Radio Holographic Analysis of Venus Express and Akatsuki Radio Occultation Data
Tellmann, Silvia; Pätzold, Martin; Imamura, Takeshi +10 more
Radio occultation (RO) is one of the most efficient techniques for studying fine vertical structures in planetary atmospheres. However, the geometrical optics (GO) method, which has been used for the analysis of RO data, suffers blurring by the finite width (Fresnel scale) of the radio ray and cannot decipher multipath propagation, which also prev…