Related papers: The June 2012 transit of Venus. Framework for inte…
Many observers in the past gave detailed descriptions of the telescopic aspect of Venus during its extremely rare transits across the Solar disk. In particular, at the ingress and egress, the portion of the planet's disk outside the Solar…
On 5-6 June 2012, Venus will be transiting the Sun for the last time before 2117. This event is an unique opportunity to assess the feasibility of the atmospheric characterisation of Earth-size exoplanets near the habitable zone with the…
The data of 2012 transit of Venus are compared with the ones of 2004. The thickness of the atmosphere of Venus, its aureole and the effect of oblateness and other asphericities in the figure of the Sun are taken into consideration, as well…
The atmosphere of a transiting planet shields the stellar radiation providing us with a powerful method to estimate its size and density. In particular, because of their high ionization energy, atoms with high atomic number (Z) absorb…
The mesosphere of Venus is a critical range of altitudes in which complex temperature variability has been extensively studied by the space mission Venus Express (Vex) during its eight-years mission (2006-2014). Data collected at different…
The possibility to measure the solar diameter using the transits of Mercury has been exploited to investigate the past three centuries of its evolution and to calibrate these measurements made with satellites. This measurement basically…
It has been posited that lunar eclipse observations may help predict the in-transit signature of Earth-like extrasolar planets. However, a comparative analysis of the two phenomena addressing in detail the transport of stellar light through…
The transit of Venus in 2004 offered the rare possibility to remotely sense a well-known planetary atmosphere using ground-based observations for absorption spectroscopy. Transmission spectra of Venus' atmosphere were obtained in the near…
The variation of the solar diameter in time and in position angle has implications in astrophysics and in general relativity, as the long series of studies attest. The Transits of Venus in 2004 and 2012 have been carefully studied because…
This work analyzes the X-ray, EUV and UV emission apparently coming from the Earth-facing (dark) side of Venus as observed with Hinode/XRT and SDO/AIA during a transit across the solar disk occurred in 2012. We have measured significant…
Thermal radiation becomes a prominent feature in the continuum spectrum of Venus longwards of $\sim$3 $\mu$m. The emission is traceable to the upper cloud and haze layers in the planet's mesosphere. Venus' thermal radiation spectrum is…
We obtained two astronomical values, the Earth-Venus distance and Venus diameter, by means of a geometrical treatment of photos taken of Venus transit in June of 2012. Here we presented the static and translational modelsthat were…
Stellar activity manifests differently across wavelengths, causing flux variability that can obscure planetary transits. While transit observations are typically performed in the visible and infrared bands, where stellar flux is relatively…
Transit spectroscopy is a key tool for exoplanet atmospheric characterization. However, transit spectrum observations can be limited by aerosol extinction when gas opacities are weak. The ultraviolet wavelength range contains a variety of…
Measuring Venus' atmospheric circulation at different altitudes is important for understanding its complex dynamics, in particular the mechanisms driving the super-rotation. Observationally, Doppler imaging spectroscopy is in principle be…
The role of Venus and Mercury transits is crucial to know the past history of the solar diameter. Through the W parameter, the logarithmic derivative of the radius with respect to the luminosity, the past values of the solar luminosity can…
The main observations of 1761 by M. Lomonossov and those that followed are recalled by extending the discussion to other remarkable visual observations of the passages, then with more and more powerful imagers producing images in profusion.…
The atmospheric composition of transiting exoplanets can be characterized during transit by spectroscopy. For the transit of an Earth twin, models predict that biogenic $O_2$ and $O_3$ should be detectable, as well as water vapour, a…
Refraction deflects photons that pass through atmospheres, which affects transit light curves. Refraction thus provides an avenue to probe physical properties of exoplanet atmospheres and to constrain the presence of clouds and hazes. In…
The atmospheric circulation in Venus is well known to exhibit strong super-rotation. However, the atmospheric mechanisms responsible for the formation of this super-rotation are still not fully understood. In this work, we developed a new…