Institute of Space and Astronautical Science | JAXA | 2020 Aug 05
A planetary-scale cloud discontinuity has been periodically lashing the depths of the thick blanket of clouds on the equator of Venus since at least 1983.
In the cloudy heavens of Venus, an enormous atmospheric disruption, not yet seen elsewhere in the Solar System, has been rapidly propagating at around 50 kilometers above the hidden surface, keeping unnoticed for at least 35 years. ...
Venus is often called our sister planet because of similarities in size, mass, density and volume. However, the Venusian environment and the atmosphere is entirely different from those of Earth. The surface of Venus is the hottest in the solar system at a searing 465 °C (enough to melt lead). The atmosphere, consisting mostly of carbon dioxide with clouds made of droplets of Sulphuric acid, is about 90 times as thick as that of the Earth's and show various phenomena unobserved for other planets in the solar system.
The newly discovered phenomenon, the atmospheric disruption, can sometimes extend as far as 7,500 kilometers, across the equator, from 30º north to 40º south, and happens at the deeper clouds which comprise altitudes between 47.5 and 56.5 kilometers. It was now discovered that since at least 1983 this wall of acid clouds is periodically swiping the solid globe in five days, at about 328 kilometers per hour. ...
Decades-Long Deep Giant Cloud Disruption Discovered on Venus
Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences, Portugal | 2020 Aug 05
A Long‐Lived Sharp Disruption on the Lower Clouds of Venus ~ J. Peralta et al
- Geophysical Research Letters 47(11):7221 (16 Jun 2020) DOI: 10.1029/2020GL087221
- arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:2005.13540 > 27 May 2020