Venus Express Options

[elakdawalla]

I have now downloaded ALL of the data -- it took forever because for some reason I was only getting about 50 K/s download speeds. So it took about 4 days. A good thing for my computer to work on while I was on vacation I am slowly working toward getting a browse page set up; first thing is to run everything through IMG2PNG. It's possible I may have browse pages with thumbnails only posted before I get to the massive pile of actual data.

--Emily

[elakdawalla]

As promised...just the UV images, and just the browse resolution, but links take you to the .IMG files. It'll be a couple of days before I can get to the IMG2PNG batch conversion, but this is a start!

http://planetary.org/data/vex/

--Emily

[remcook]

Other data has been released too, including VIRTIS:

http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/in...fobjectid=43446

I'd say: go for it

[cndwrld]

Venus Express searching for life – on Earth.
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMUOW4N0MF_index_0.html

We've been using the Virtis imaging spectrometer two or three times a month to observe the Earth, to get a baseline on what a habitable planet looks like in the spectra.

[peter59]

Other data has been released too, including VIRTIS:

http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/in...fobjectid=43446

I'd say: go for it

VIRTIS data released.
ftp://psa.esac.esa.int/pub/mirror/VENUS-EXPRESS/VIRTIS/

Example:

Description:
1. Near-IR surface band 1.02um (equalized)
2. Infrared airglow band 1.27um (equalized)
3. Infrared atmospheric window at 1.74um (equalized)
4. Infrared atmospheric window at 2.3um (equalized)
5. Summing of bands 3.67um to 3.77um (equalized)
6. Summing of thermic bands 5um to 5.12um (equalized)
7. Summing of odd bands 2.2um-2.4um (masked and filtered)
8. Surface elevation from Magellan geometric data

[dilo]

Wow, Peter, I ignored the possibility to see major surface features in near IR from orbit! Is like to see Cassini Titan surface images for the first time, after delusion from Voyager...

[cndwrld]

Dima Titov is one of the science leaders of the Venus Monitoring Camera (VMC) on Venus Express, and an all-around nice guy. He was greatly involved in getting Venus Express designed and approved inside of ESA. He is now the leader on a paper that is published today (04 Dec 08) in Nature on the source of the distinctive banding in the Venusian clouds. It is a short, 4 parge Letter, but very interesting (if you're into this sort of thing).

+ VENUS EXPRESS UNVEILS THE CAUSE OF VENUS' GLOBAL CLOUD PATTERNS
A recent study combining the multi-wavelength data from the VMC and the VIRTIS instruments on board Venus Express has
shed light on the atmospheric conditions that are responsible for the characteristic ultraviolet features in
the Venusian cloud deck.

http://sci.esa.int/jump.cfm?oid=43792

While the paper is up, you can also go directly to: www.nature.com.

[marsbug]

The article above mentions that the UV absorber appears to be drawn from the lower clouds...I wonder if the absorber is being recycled: Brought to the cloud tops, broken down by uv, reconstituted and brought up again... or if there is a fixed amount in the atmosphere and it just goes up and down.... still very mysterious! News from VEX has been...well there hasn't been any for a while now (not a complaint, just an observation), does anyone know if there are any articles or papers in the works?

[remcook]

http://www.agu.org/journals/je/special_sec...;journalCode=JE
2 special issues of JGR just published/about to be published with quite some papers.

[marsbug]

Thank you! Some fascinating papers, in particlular some dealing with what looks to be a CO-OCS cycle between the lower and middle atmosphere, exact chemistry still to be determined. Apparently some aerosols of unsual composition or unusual size at the poles... could that have some bearing on the question of the 'mode 3' particles? Venus is still guarding its mysteries.

[cndwrld]

In the ESA Planetary Science Archive (PSA), at http://www.rssd.esa.int/psa, there is now available some additional VEX data:

- the entire nominal mission for the Venus Monitoring Camera (VMC)
- The first 2 releases (up to orbit 235) of raw data for SPICAV SOIR, the solar spectral imager
- The first 3 releases (up to orbit 799) of the extended mission for VMC.

[tedstryk]

Wow, this is quite interesting...a VIRTIS thermal map of the southern hemisphere.

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMUQCLXOWF_Expanding_0.html

[stevesliva]

Wow, this is quite interesting...a VIRTIS thermal map of the southern hemisphere.

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMUQCLXOWF_Expanding_0.html

Total temperature range is 20C, and it seems to match the topography pretty well, though. Maybe there is some extra heat around 60E.

[ngunn]

From 'Science Daily':

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/...90916092536.htm

I found this summary of Venus science from the Europlanet conference interesting reading, and the latest day/night Venus image particularly satisfying. My main reason for posting, though, is that I have a query that someone here may be able to answer. A major part of the article is about the enrichment of heavy water in the atmosphere and its implications. Now I recall a very interesting earlier piece about what I suppose we can call heavy carbon dioxide: how the asymmetry of the molecule (O16 and O18) produces distinctive extra IR absorption features in the spectrum that increase it's effectiveness as a greenhouse gas on Venus.

The question is: does heavy water containing H1 and H2 behave in a similar way? If so, does this have any significant effect on either Venus, Earth or Mars?

EDIT - A further question has just occurred to me. What about even heavier water containing normal hydrogens and O18? Is that also enriched on Venus? The answer would tell us whether most of the escaping hydrogen leaves Venus still bound to water molecules, or after those molecules have been dissociated in the upper atmosphere.

[Juramike]

The question is: does heavy water containing H1 and H2 behave in a similar way? If so, does this have any significant effect on either Venus, Earth or Mars?

EDIT - A further question has just occurred to me. What about even heavier water containing normal hydrogens and O18? Is that also enriched on Venus? The answer would tell us whether most of the escaping hydrogen leaves Venus still bound to water molecules, or after those molecules have been dissociated in the upper atmosphere.

I'll take a hands-waving stab at it.

Heavy water HDO should cause an IR shift due to a new assymetry and due to the much larger change going from H (1 amu) doubling up to D (2 amu).
But I don't think the difference will be as impressive, since the original H2O IR absorbance is very broad (I believe due to transient intermolecular H-bonds of the molecules flying around - tends to broaden the vibrational states).

H2O18 is still a symmetrical molecule. So the only difference will be that the absorbance will shift due to the difference in atomic weight 1H-18O vs 1H-16O. But for the same reasons above, the band will still be broad.

[Theoretically, the broadening should be "different" with a transient O-D-O network compared to O-H-O network.]