Related papers: Venus Cloud Research: Progress and Perspectives
Venus' atmosphere -- specifically its clouds buoyed up 40 to 60 km above the surface -- has long been suspected to encompass a biosphere where Earth-like living organisms could grow and flourish. This idea has been recently rekindled by the…
First identified in 2016 by JAXA's Akatsuki mission, the discontinuity/disruption is a recurrent wave observed to propagate during decades at the deeper clouds of Venus (47--56 km above the surface), while its absence at the clouds' top…
This work reviews the long-term evolution of the atmosphere of Venus, and modulation of its composition by interior-exterior cycling. The formation and evolution of Venus's atmosphere, leading to contemporary surface conditions, remain…
One of the most intriguing, long-standing questions regarding Venus' atmosphere is the origin and distribution of the unknown UV-absorber, responsible for the absorption band detected at the near-UV and blue range of Venus' spectrum. In…
We report Venus image observations around the two maximum elongations of the planet at June and October 2015. From these images we describe the global atmospheric dynamics and cloud morphology in the planet before the arrival of JAXA…
The key goals of the astrobiology community are to identify environments beyond Earth that may be habitable, and to search for signs of life in those environments. A fundamental aspect of understanding the limits of habitable environments…
Venus exhibits strong and changing contrasts at ultraviolet wavelengths apparently related to the clouds and the dynamics in the cloud layer, but to date their origin continues to be unknown. We investigate the nature of the UV contrasts…
Firstly identified in images from JAXA's orbiter Akatsuki, the cloud discontinuity of Venus is a planetary-scale phenomenon known to be recurrent since, at least, the 1980s. Interpreted as a new type of Kelvin wave, this disruption is…
The similarity of Venus and Earth in bulk properties make Venus an appealing target for future colonization. Several proposals have been put forward for colonizing and even terraforming Venus despite the extreme conditions on the planet's…
Compared to the diversity seen in exoplanets, Venus is a veritable astrophysical twin of the Earth, however its global cloud layer truncates features in transmission spectroscopy, masking its non-Earth-like nature. Observational indicators…
Measurements of trace-gases in planetary atmospheres help us explore chemical conditions different to those on Earth. Our nearest neighbor, Venus, has cloud decks that are temperate but hyper-acidic. We report the apparent presence of…
The potential detection of phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus has reignited interest in the possibility of life aloft in this environment. If the cloud decks of Venus are indeed an abode of life, it should reside in the "habitable zone"…
During the years 2016 to 2018, the instruments Akatsuki/IR2 (JAXA) and IRTF/SpeX (NASA) acquired a large set of images at 1.74, 2.26 and 2.32 {\mu}m to study the nightside mid-to-lower clouds (48-60 km) of Venus. Here we summarize the rich…
The current goals of the astrobiology community are focused on developing a framework for the detection of biosignatures, or evidence thereof, on objects inside and outside of our solar system. A fundamental aspect of understanding the…
Venus shares many similarities with the Earth, but concomitantly, some of its features are extremely original. This is especially true for its atmosphere, where high pressures and temperatures are found at the ground level. In these…
Here, we evaluate our nearest planetary neighbor, Venus, as an exemplar of the runaway greenhouse state that bounds the inner edge of the habitable zone. Despite its current hellish surface environment, Venus may once have been habitable…
The Venusian clouds originate from the binary condensation of H$_{2}$SO$_{4}$ and H$_{2}$O. The two components strongly interact with each other via chemistry and cloud formation. Previous works adopted sophisticated microphysical…
Measurements in the atmosphere and at the surface of Venus are required to understand fundamental processes of how terrestrial planets evolve and how they work today. While the European Venus community is unified in its support of the…
The goals of the astrobiology community are focussed on developing a framework for the detection of biosignatures, or evidence thereof, on objects inside and outside of our solar system. A fundamental aspect of understanding the limits of…
There are a handful of spectral windows in the near-IR through which we can see down to Venus' surface on the night side of the planet. The surface of our sister planet has thus been imaged by sensors on Venus-orbiting platforms (Venus…