Venus Express Observations of Ionospheric Whistler-Mode Waves: Evidence of Planetary- Wide Lightning Occurrence

Details Venus Express Observations of Ionospheric Whistler-Mode Waves: Evidence of Planetary- Wide Lightning Occurrence Venus Express Observations of Ionospheric Whistler-Mode Waves: Evidence of Planetary- Wide Lightning Occurrence

Dec 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006agufm.p42a..03r&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2006, abstract #P42A-03

Other

2471 Plasma Waves And Instabilities (2772), 3324 Lightning, 6295 Venus

Scientific paper

The Venus Express fluxgate magnetometer included a mode with a 128 Hz sampling rate expressly to test whether the 100 Hz signals observed by Pioneer Venus near periapsis when the spacecraft was in darkness were electromagnetic in nature. Based on the PVO measurements signals up to 5 nT peak to peak could be expected. Since late May 2006, Venus Express has been returning 2 minutes of 128 Hz fluxgate data, centered on periapsis (about 300 km altitude) every orbit. The spacecraft periapsis was initially near 0400 LT, a location of minimal 100 Hz signals in the Pioneer Venus data. Bursts of circularly polarized signal, lasting from about 0.25 to 0.5s, at frequencies about 100 Hz were observed in 1 orbit out of 10. These bursts were about 0.5 nT peak to peak with a wave power about 50 times the noise level of the magnetometer. Well defined wave normals were obtained. When the spacecraft transitioned into sunlight the rate of occurrence increased somewhat and the number of bursts per session increased significantly. By the time Venus Express reached noon, the bursts were present quasi-continuously and on nearly every orbit, albeit somewhat reduced in amplitude. These observations demonstrate that the Pioneer Venus observations were indeed correct, that lightning is pervasive occurring probably at all local times, albeit less often at some local times than others. We also now can obtain diagnostic waveforms of the phenomenon.

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