Observing The Surface Of Venus With VIRTIS On Venus Express

Details Observing The Surface Of Venus With VIRTIS On Venus Express Observing The Surface Of Venus With VIRTIS On Venus Express

Sep 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006dps....38.1603h&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #38, #16.03; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 38, p.510

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We will report about our first successful observations o the surface of Venus using the atmospheric windows located at 1.02, 1.10, 1.18 µm with the M-channel of VIRTIS on Venus Express. Observations of the southern hemisphere obtained directly after orbit insertion and during the first orbits of the science phase show radiance variations correlated with temperature variations associated with large scale topographic features on the surface.
The atmospheric windows sound the thermal emission of the surface as was demonstrated before by Galileo/NIMS (Carlson et al. 1991) and Cassini/VIMS (Baines et al. 2000). While the atmospheric windows show little CO2 absorption, the radiance from the surface is still affected by scattering in the clouds. This effect varies based on the optical thickness of the clouds. We have developed a quicklook processing procedure which reduces the cloud induced variation and enhances thereby the signal from the surface. The procedure corrects also for various atmospheric effects, incl. limb darkening, scattered sunlight, etc. During the mission the algorithm will be refined based on the data returned from the different instruments on Venus Express. The next step will be to search for relative emissivity variation and to map their correlation with geological units. The final goal is to derive maps of the absolute surface emissivity.
VIRTIS will for the first time do a systematic survey of a large percentage of the surface of Venus. This dataset will be complementary to the existing data from surface investigation using radar and from the in-situ measurements at the landing sites. An integration of these datasets will significantly improve our understanding of the evolution of the surface of Venus. Furthermore the mapping of the variability of the surface temperature can be a direct indicator for active volcanism.

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