The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
Go to topicThank you for liking
You have already liked this page, you can only like it once!
This is a map showing the changes in temperatures in Venus’ atmosphere with altitude at different latitudes. The maps have been obtained with radio from the VeRa instrument on ESA’s Venus Express orbiter.
It is obvious that the day-side is hotter than night-side at low as well as high altitudes, because of solar energy absorbed by the clouds.
The day-time temperature increases by about 30–40 degrees from the south pole to the equator at altitudes below 60 km. This shows that clouds absorb more solar radiation at the equator than at the poles. This contrasts to the roughly constant night-time temperature below 60 km.
It appears that there is a day–night equatorial temperature difference that reaches about 40 degrees at 55 km altitude. The ‘cold collar’, a temperature depression encircling the pole in both hemispheres, is clearly observed on both the day-side and the night-side between 60° and 80° latitude at 63km altitude. The collar extends to 40° latitude during the night in the southern hemisphere.