I am located far enough north in Europe that I expect to see most of the transit, but yes, it will start just after midnight.
Full Version: Venus Express
Oh yes, after reading your reply I had a look at the transit map. And indeed, it will not be seen at all in Spain.
I am located far enough north in Europe that I expect to see most of the transit, but yes, it will start just after midnight.
I am located far enough north in Europe that I expect to see most of the transit, but yes, it will start just after midnight.
A little more information about what Venus Express will be up to around the time of, and during, the Venus Transit on 05/06 June.
Venus Express will be making a sequence of observations around the time of the transit:
- The VMC camera will obtain sequences of images of Venus in UV, visible and IR during the time of the transit, from South to North latitudes.
- The VIRTIS imaging spectrometer (an imaging spectrometer that observes in the near-ultraviolet, visible, and infrared) team will obtain data in the visible channel from the South pole and southern latitudes.
- A full Sun disk Scan will be performed by the Spicav spectrometer (an imaging spectrometer that used for analyzing radiation in the infrared and ultraviolet wavelengths), just before the transit starts.
- there will be a solar occultation observation during the time of the transit, measured by the SOIR (Solar Occultation at Infrared) instrument team that will be used to observe the Sun through Venus's atmosphere in the infrared. This measurement is described here and more generally here. The SOIR team has a lot of information online and has a useful twitter feed at @BIRA_IASB . There will be 4-5 people from the SOIR team in Svalbard, observing the transit from one place in Europe (above the Arctic Circle) where it will be fully visible.
The Venus transit will be a special moment for the SOIR team and their colleagues in the scientific community. The SOIR commands that will be sent to the instrument will enable recording the spectra of CO2 on the whole Venus altitude range available to the SOIR instrument. These measurements will give us indirect information about the temperature. Absorption due to aerosols will also be investigated.
Thanks to collaborations with ground-based observers, simultaneous measurements have been planned, namely with Pr. T. Widemann (Observatoire de Paris, France) and Dr. B. Sandor (Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colorado, USA). Dr. B. Sandor will, for instance, observe the Venus transit from Mauna Kea, Hawaï, using the James Clerk Maxwell (JCMT) telescope.
The data obtained with SOIR and the telescopes will be compared. This will enable scientists studying the atmospheres of exoplanets outside our solar system to test their instruments against a known, real-world example.
Note that all data from VEX observations will not be downloaded to Earth until at least 48 hours after the transit, because there is no communication with the spacecraft when it is directly in front of the Sun.
Venus Express will be making a sequence of observations around the time of the transit:
- The VMC camera will obtain sequences of images of Venus in UV, visible and IR during the time of the transit, from South to North latitudes.
- The VIRTIS imaging spectrometer (an imaging spectrometer that observes in the near-ultraviolet, visible, and infrared) team will obtain data in the visible channel from the South pole and southern latitudes.
- A full Sun disk Scan will be performed by the Spicav spectrometer (an imaging spectrometer that used for analyzing radiation in the infrared and ultraviolet wavelengths), just before the transit starts.
- there will be a solar occultation observation during the time of the transit, measured by the SOIR (Solar Occultation at Infrared) instrument team that will be used to observe the Sun through Venus's atmosphere in the infrared. This measurement is described here and more generally here. The SOIR team has a lot of information online and has a useful twitter feed at @BIRA_IASB . There will be 4-5 people from the SOIR team in Svalbard, observing the transit from one place in Europe (above the Arctic Circle) where it will be fully visible.
The Venus transit will be a special moment for the SOIR team and their colleagues in the scientific community. The SOIR commands that will be sent to the instrument will enable recording the spectra of CO2 on the whole Venus altitude range available to the SOIR instrument. These measurements will give us indirect information about the temperature. Absorption due to aerosols will also be investigated.
Thanks to collaborations with ground-based observers, simultaneous measurements have been planned, namely with Pr. T. Widemann (Observatoire de Paris, France) and Dr. B. Sandor (Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colorado, USA). Dr. B. Sandor will, for instance, observe the Venus transit from Mauna Kea, Hawaï, using the James Clerk Maxwell (JCMT) telescope.
The data obtained with SOIR and the telescopes will be compared. This will enable scientists studying the atmospheres of exoplanets outside our solar system to test their instruments against a known, real-world example.
Note that all data from VEX observations will not be downloaded to Earth until at least 48 hours after the transit, because there is no communication with the spacecraft when it is directly in front of the Sun.
There was too long a gap in the Venus Express status reports. We got pretty busy for a while. But the most recent one just went up on the VEX SciTech web page. Click on the Latest Status Report on this page. The next one should go up in a few days.
The VEX Status Report 246 is now on-line.
No. 246 - End of quadrature and eclipse seasons, continuation of the mission's longest Earth occultation season and start of the eighth Atmospheric Drag Experiment campaign
Report for the period 1 April to 28 April 2012
Click here and then click on the most recent date under "Latest Status Report".
No. 246 - End of quadrature and eclipse seasons, continuation of the mission's longest Earth occultation season and start of the eighth Atmospheric Drag Experiment campaign
Report for the period 1 April to 28 April 2012
Click here and then click on the most recent date under "Latest Status Report".
Curious cold layer in the atmosphere of Venus even possible CO2 ice. Who could imagine on such a hot planet closer to the Sun.
More on this ESA page
More on this ESA page
QUOTE (TheAnt @ Oct 4 2012, 11:45 PM) 
Curious cold layer in the atmosphere of Venus even possible CO2 ice.
full paper available here http://venus.aeronomie.be/multimedia/pdf/M...CO2_jgr2012.pdf
The latest Venus Express operations report, #247, has been put on-line. It covers May of 2012, and discusses:
* two orbit correction manoeuvres,
* the end of the eighth Atmospheric Drag Experiment (ADE) campaign, and
* the continuation of the mission's longest Earth occultation season.
We've added a couple separate sections to discuss changes over time in the Local Time at Ascending Node (LTAN) and the pericenter altitude.
The link to the page is here.
* two orbit correction manoeuvres,
* the end of the eighth Atmospheric Drag Experiment (ADE) campaign, and
* the continuation of the mission's longest Earth occultation season.
We've added a couple separate sections to discuss changes over time in the Local Time at Ascending Node (LTAN) and the pericenter altitude.
The link to the page is here.
Another Venus Express operations status report has just gone up.
We plan four months in advance, and we wait to write the status reports until all the data and operations status are known, which to be truly complete is a couple months after the operations. The current report is #248, which covers our Medium Term Plan 80, or our 80th month of operations. This MTP covered 27 May to 23 June 2012.
This reporting period covered the transit of Venus during inferior conjunction, the continuation of the mission's longest Earth occultation season, and the start of the twenty-first eclipse season.
The report can be found in the VEX status report archive.
We plan four months in advance, and we wait to write the status reports until all the data and operations status are known, which to be truly complete is a couple months after the operations. The current report is #248, which covers our Medium Term Plan 80, or our 80th month of operations. This MTP covered 27 May to 23 June 2012.
This reporting period covered the transit of Venus during inferior conjunction, the continuation of the mission's longest Earth occultation season, and the start of the twenty-first eclipse season.
The report can be found in the VEX status report archive.
The latest Venus Express on-line status report is now available. The most recent report covers our operations in June and July of this 2012.
All of these reports can be found on the Venus Express section of the ESA Science and Technology pages. The VEX page is located at:
http://sci.esa.int/venusexpress
On that page, there is a section labeled with a link called "Latest Status Reports."
We hope that people will find these of interest.
All of these reports can be found on the Venus Express section of the ESA Science and Technology pages. The VEX page is located at:
http://sci.esa.int/venusexpress
On that page, there is a section labeled with a link called "Latest Status Reports."
We hope that people will find these of interest.
There's a new press release from Venus Express about volcanism on Venus.
A new episode of active volcanism on Venus?
02 Dec 2012
For decades, planetary scientists have debated whether Venus possesses active volcanoes. The latest twist to the tale is provided by data sent back from ESA's Venus Express orbiter, revealing unexplained major changes in the amount of sulphur dioxide gas above the planet's dense cloud layer.
You can read the article here.
A new episode of active volcanism on Venus?
02 Dec 2012
For decades, planetary scientists have debated whether Venus possesses active volcanoes. The latest twist to the tale is provided by data sent back from ESA's Venus Express orbiter, revealing unexplained major changes in the amount of sulphur dioxide gas above the planet's dense cloud layer.
You can read the article here.
Glad to see this last update made it to the news in one of the main newspapers in Spain.
This is quite the week for reporting the detection of a substance on one of the inner planets. That's three for three!
This one might be the most meaningful. Venusian volcanism is an interesting foil to terrestrial thermal evolution.
To explore this quantitatively, I get that the mass of SO2 detected above 70km corresponds to about 1/3 of the SO2 released by the Mt. Pinatubo explosion on Earth (overall, with no altitude qualification) in 1991. That leaves unanswered how much SO2 might have behaved below 70 km, or whether or not there's a compelling reason to compare the volume (or composition) of venusian vs. terrestrial outgassing events, but at least it's interesting to see such a close correspondence in volume.
This one might be the most meaningful. Venusian volcanism is an interesting foil to terrestrial thermal evolution.
To explore this quantitatively, I get that the mass of SO2 detected above 70km corresponds to about 1/3 of the SO2 released by the Mt. Pinatubo explosion on Earth (overall, with no altitude qualification) in 1991. That leaves unanswered how much SO2 might have behaved below 70 km, or whether or not there's a compelling reason to compare the volume (or composition) of venusian vs. terrestrial outgassing events, but at least it's interesting to see such a close correspondence in volume.
ESA Web Page Redesign Launchec
The web pages for the general public of the European Space Agency have been redesigned. The new Venus Express page can be seen at the usual location here.
The Science and Technology pages haven't been updated yet. The SciTech pages here will be updated in the future. The SciTech page links to the VEX status reports remains unchanged for now.
The web pages for the general public of the European Space Agency have been redesigned. The new Venus Express page can be seen at the usual location here.
The Science and Technology pages haven't been updated yet. The SciTech pages here will be updated in the future. The SciTech page links to the VEX status reports remains unchanged for now.
We've added a couple more status reports for Venus Express, covering July through September 2012.
You can find them by clicking on the links in the Latest Status Report box at
http://sci.esa.int/venusexpress.
Operationally, it was a pretty complicated summer.
You can find them by clicking on the links in the Latest Status Report box at
http://sci.esa.int/venusexpress.
Operationally, it was a pretty complicated summer.
In some of the terminator orbits of Venus Express, sequences of images were taken. One of those, from some time ago, have been made into a 12 second movie, showing the view from the spacecraft as it does one orbit around Venus. You can see it at www.esa.int/science where it is featured for now, and directly at http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Sc...f_Venus_Express.
Nice! Lot of potential in those frames.
The latest Venus Express status report is on-line, with the results for mid-September to mid-October 2012. This is report 252, for our 84th monthly planning cycle (MTP084).
The Science and Technology page for Venus Express is here, and then you click on the Latest Status Report link.
The Science and Technology page for Venus Express is here, and then you click on the Latest Status Report link.
29 January 2013
ESA’s Venus Express has made unique observations of Venus during a period of reduced solar wind pressure, discovering that the planet’s ionosphere balloons out like a comet’s tail on its nightside. The results are discussed on the ESA web page here .
ESA’s Venus Express has made unique observations of Venus during a period of reduced solar wind pressure, discovering that the planet’s ionosphere balloons out like a comet’s tail on its nightside. The results are discussed on the ESA web page here .
The latest Venus Express status report is on-line, with the results for mid-October to mid-November 2012. This is report 253, for our 85th monthly planning cycle (MTP085).
The Science and Technology page for Venus Express is here, and then you click on the Latest Status Report link and choose report 253.
The Science and Technology page for Venus Express is here, and then you click on the Latest Status Report link and choose report 253.
Latest Venus Express status report on-line for January 2013, at http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/in...fobjectid=51597. It is, of course, written in the required humorless way. But I try to explain things so that people new to this stuff can understand it. If you find mistakes or things that aren't clear, please let me know.
And for your information, the ESA Science & Technology web pages (including for Venus Express) have been upgraded to a new format. It looks a lot better. The link to the Venus Express SciTech page is http://sci.esa.int/venusexpress.
And for your information, the ESA Science & Technology web pages (including for Venus Express) have been upgraded to a new format. It looks a lot better. The link to the Venus Express SciTech page is http://sci.esa.int/venusexpress.
The Venus Express Mission Operations Report 257, for our 89th monthly planning cycle, is now on-line.
It includes an overview of our simultaneous seasons of solar eclipses and Earth occultations, targets for the surface mapping campaign, and an explanation of how we manage orbit correction maneuvers as fuel and oxidizer tanks approach low liquid levels in zero gravity.
VEX Mission Operations Report 257 (Planning Cycle 089))
It includes an overview of our simultaneous seasons of solar eclipses and Earth occultations, targets for the surface mapping campaign, and an explanation of how we manage orbit correction maneuvers as fuel and oxidizer tanks approach low liquid levels in zero gravity.
VEX Mission Operations Report 257 (Planning Cycle 089))
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