Cloud structures along the northern hemisphere of Venus

This mosaic is composed of more than 40 single ultraviolet images obtained by the Venus Monitoring Camera (VMC) on board ESA’s Venus Express when the spacecraft was around the closest point of its orbit to the planet over the northern polar region. The images, taken at 365 nanometres on 23 April 2007 were obtained from decreasing distances ranging between 5000 and 1000 km, which resulted in a shrinking of the VMC field of view from 1500 to 300 km.

The mosaic covers latitudes from the equator (bottom) to the northern polar regions (top). The transition from mottled clouds at low latitudes to streaky patterns at mid-latitudes is quite similar to that observed in the southern hemisphere. This suggests a global north-south symmetry of the overall cloud structure at Venus