Venus’ stormy atmosphere

This video is composed by six different sequences of images obtained by the Venus Monitoring Camera (VMC) onboard Venus Express on 21 and 24 May 2006, 27 December 2006, and on 3, 4 and 6 January 2007 respectively. Distance from the planet’s surface varies from 60 000 to 25 000 kilometres. All images were obtained through the camera’s UV filter, at a wavelength of 367 nanometres.

The scene covers the south pole of Venus (lower-left corner of the image) up to the planet’s equator. It shows the upper cloud deck, as well as a bright haze above it. Venus’ atmospheric super-rotation – by which winds take only four Earth-day to circumnavigate the whole planet - is in anti-clockwise direction. The stormy atmosphere of Venus shows its complexity through the marked variation in the clouds morphology, especially in the polar region, where oval and spiral structures can be observed.

An interactive, mouse-clickable version of this movie can be downloaded here (35 267 kb)