Venus's southern polar vortex reveals precessing circulation.
Initial images of Venus's south pole by the Venus Express mission have shown the presence of a bright, highly variable vortex, similar to that at the planet's north pole. Using high-resolution infrared measurements of polar winds from the Venus Express Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging...
Published in: | Science |
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Main Authors: | , , , , , , , |
Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
Language: | English |
Published: |
2016
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1201629 https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:b810e2fa-7fb2-4962-9b99-b44fbfdebdf6 |
Summary: | Initial images of Venus's south pole by the Venus Express mission have shown the presence of a bright, highly variable vortex, similar to that at the planet's north pole. Using high-resolution infrared measurements of polar winds from the Venus Express Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer (VIRTIS) instrument, we show the vortex to have a constantly varying internal structure, with a center of rotation displaced from the geographic south pole by ~3 degrees of latitude and that drifts around the pole with a period of 5 to 10 Earth days. This is indicative of a nonsymmetric and varying precession of the polar atmospheric circulation with respect to the planetary axis. |
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