Related papers: Venus Cloud Research: Progress and Perspectives
Present-day Venus is an inhospitable place with surface temperatures approaching 750K and an atmosphere over 90 times as thick as present day Earth's. Billions of years ago the picture may have been very different. We have created a suite…
Clouds and hazes are commonplace in the atmospheres of solar system planets and are likely ubiquitous in the atmospheres of extrasolar planets as well. Clouds affect every aspect of a planetary atmosphere, from the transport of radiation,…
Venus's climatic history provides powerful constraint on the location of the inner-edge of the liquid-water habitable zone. However, two very different histories of water on Venus have been proposed: one where Venus had a temperate climate…
We present a re-examination of mass spectral data obtained from the Pioneer Venus Large Probe Neutral Mass Spectrometer. Our interpretations of differing trace chemical species are suggestive of redox disequilibria in Venus' middle clouds.…
At visible wavelengths, Venus appears serene and pale-yellow, but since the 1920s, observers have noted high-contrast features in the ultraviolet. These features track the about 4-day superrotation of the upper cloud deck and vary widely…
The discovery of phosphine in Venus' atmosphere provides lessons for the search for life. The detection has survived all challenges and has acquired independent support from archival data from PVP. The presence of phosphine in Venus'…
We simulate Venus' evolution with a coupled one-dimensional solar-atmosphere-lithosphere-mantle-core model to predict currently unobservable features and its eruptive mass flux. We identified four distinct evolutionary pathways that…
The composition, sizes and shapes of particles in the clouds of Venus have previously been studied with a variety of in situ and remote sensor measurements. A number of major questions remain unresolved, however, motivating the development…
A planet's spectrum is dynamic and only represents a time-dependent snapshot of its properties. Changing atmospheric conditions due to climate and weather patterns, particularly variation in cloud cover, can significantly affect the…
On 14th September 2020, the Royal Astronomical Society made an official statement coupled with a webminar on the discovery of phosphine on Venus. Single-line millimetre-waveband spectral detections of phosphine (with a signal-to-noise ratio…
Venus clouds host a convective layer between roughly 50 and 60 km that mixes heat, momentum, and chemical species. Observations and numerical modelling have helped to understand the complexity of this region. However, the impact on…
The composition of an atmosphere has integrated the geological history of the entire planetary body. However, the long-term evolutions of the atmospheres of the terrestrial planets are not well documented. For Earth, there were until…
Few spacecraft have studied the dynamics of Venus' deep atmosphere, which is needed to understand the interactions between the surface and atmosphere. Recent global simulations suggest a strong effect of the diurnal cycle of surface winds…
While Earth locks much of its carbon in its crust as carbonates, Venus retains a comparable carbon inventory almost entirely in its atmosphere as CO$_2$. On Earth, the geological carbon cycle that has produced this vast crustal carbonate…
Signs of lightning on Venus have long been sought, including by space missions and ground-based telescopes searching for optical flashes, plasma waves, or radio signatures. These efforts have yielded conflicting findings regarding the…
Venus is 95% the size of Earth and probably has a similar composition and internal energy, but the geodynamical mechanism governing its internal thermal evolution remains controversial. Much of the planet surface (77%) is covered by…
Understanding planetary habitability is one of the major challenges of the current scientific era, particularly given the discovery of a large and diverse terrestrial exoplanet population. Discerning the primary factors that contribute to…
Detailed characterization of an extrasolar planet's atmosphere provides the best hope for distinguishing the makeup of its outer layers, and the only hope for understanding the interplay between initial composition, chemistry, dynamics &…
Sulfur-water chemistry plays an important role in the middle atmosphere of Venus. Ground based observations have found that simultaneously observed SO2 and H2O at ~64 km vary with time and are temporally anti-correlated. To understand these…
The detection of phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus at an abundance of $\sim 20$ ppb suggests that this gas is being generated by either indeterminate abiotic pathways or biological processes. We consider the latter possibility, and…