Wind circulation on Venus

This animation of wind circulation on Venus is composed of images taken by the Visual and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer (VIRTIS) on board ESA’s Venus Express between April 2006 and June 2007.

VIRTIS observations have provided the first-ever 3-D picture of the venusian winds for an entire planetary hemisphere. Images of the night-side (the red part of the globe) were obtained at the infrared wavelength of 1.74 micrometres, which allows tracking of the clouds at the lower boundary of the cloud layer (about 45-47 km altitude). The day-side images (the grey part of the globe) were obtained both in the near-infrared at about 980 nanometres (a window to the clouds at about 61 km altitude), and in the blue ultraviolet at about 350 nanometres (about 66 km altitude).

The non-annotated version of this animation is downloadable here.