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 Spectromet...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Luz, David, Berry, David, Piccioni, Giuseppe, Drossart, Pierre, Politi, Romolo, Wilson, Colin, Erard, Stéphane, Nuccilli, Fabrizio
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Science 2011
Subjects:
Venus
Atmosphere
Vortex
North Pole
South pole
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10174/4178
Description
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 non symmetric and varying precession of the polar atmospheric circulation with respect to the planetary axis.

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