An international team of scientists has managed to obtain valuable data on Venus’ climate. For this purpose, they analyzed images from weather satellites that incidentally captured the planet.
In terms of size and mass, Venus is similar to Earth. However, its atmosphere is the complete opposite of Earth’s: it consists almost entirely of carbon dioxide, creating a powerful greenhouse effect. This causes the surface temperature of Venus to exceed that of Mercury’s daytime side.
However, despite its extreme properties, Venus’ atmosphere experiences weather changes. However, these are not so easy to track. Currently, there are no active spacecraft in orbit around the planet, and ground-based observations are complicated by the Earth’s atmosphere and Venus’ proximity to the Sun.
Nevertheless, scientists have found a way to obtain new data. They did this by studying an archive of images taken by the Japanese weather satellites Himawari-8 and Himawari-9. They are located in near-Earth orbit and equipped with 16-channel multispectral thermal imagers capable of capturing images in the visible and infrared spectrum.
Since the field of view of the Himawari instruments is slightly larger than that of Earth, they capture not only our planet but also the surrounding space. Scientists managed to find 437 images showing Venus as a dot in the background. Despite the tiny size of the planet’s disk, satellite thermal imagers have made it possible to measure the temperature of its atmosphere at several wavelengths with sufficient accuracy.
The analysis revealed significant long-term changes in the thermal structure of Venus’ atmosphere. Temperature fluctuations are particularly noticeable in areas where the sun rises. Scientists attribute these changes to global atmospheric waves circulating around the planet.
The discovery is important not only because it provides important data about weather processes on Venus. It also provides scientists with a new tool that can be used in studying the Solar System. There are many more meteorological satellites besides the Himawari family, and other planets also appear in their images from time to time. They may well contain important data that could lead to new discoveries.
You can also read about South Korea’s plans to explore Venus using CubeSats in low Earth orbit.
According to Phys.org
