Physics – Optics
Scientific paper
Sep 2006
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006dps....38.2603t&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #38, #26.03; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 38, p.524
Physics
Optics
Scientific paper
We have observed the nightside of Venus at 2.3 microns using both IRTF on Mauna Kea and APO in New Mexico during the past two inferior conjuctions. Using IRTF we observed over a ten day span for 3-hours each day, which is sufficient to determine the major cloud motions. More recently by using both APO and IRTF we achieved a 5-hour temporal baseline each day over six days of observation. We see the lower cloud deck of Venus (48-52 km) backlit by 2.3 micron thermal radiation emanating from the surface and the lower atmosphere. These observations have allowed us to derive cloud-level wind speeds, and identify transient features in the observed Venusian wind field.
We have adapted feature-tracking algorithms from several terrestrial remote sensing applications (e.g., Wu Inter. J. Remote Sensing, 1997, 2003; Bhat IEEE Trans. on PAMI, 20, 1998; Evans, IEEE Proc. of IGRSS, 1999) in order to track cloud movement. While this is still a work in progress, we show wind vector fields based on these algorithms and discuss their potential advantages and shortfalls.
Our observations typically consist of many (a few thousand) short exposures of Venus during each twilight opportunity. These sequences lend themselves to image restoration processing by iterative blind deconvolution. We present restorations implemented using "IDAC" (Jefferies and Christou, ApJ, 415, 1993), a code that is distributed through the Center for Adaptive Optics at UC Santa Cruz. The use of IDAC has significantly increased the resolution of our ground based observations of Venus. This increases the accuracy of our wind speed measurements to the point were we can look for meridional motion.
We will be presenting our most recent results and vector fields.
This work supported by NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility and by the NASA Planetary Astronomy Program.
Bullock Mark
Coyote S.
Murphy Jeremiah
Rafkin Scot
Tavenner Tanya
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