This is the Web Edition of "A Trip Into Space", a Coimbra-based electronic book on space science. Both the texts and the photos are by courtesy of National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

A Trip Into Space Venus Further Information Venus - Infrared Map Ii	Index
See also: Venus Fact Sheet, Venus - Infrared Map I

Venus
Infrared Map Ii

This false-color image is a near-infrared map of lower-level clouds on the night side of Venus, obtained by the Near Infrared Mapping Spectrometer aboard the Galileo spacecraft as it approached the planet's night side on February 10, 1990. Bright slivers of sunlit high clouds are visible on the limb at top and bottom. The spacecraft is about 100,000 kilometers (60,000 miles) above the planet. The image was constructed using an infrared wavelength of 2.3 microns (about three times the longest wavelength visible to the human eye).

The map shows the turbulent, cloudy middle atmosphere some 50 to 55 kilometers (30 to 34 miles) above the surface, 10 to 16 kilometers (6 to 10 miles) below the visible cloud tops. The red color represents the radiant heat from the lower atmosphere (about 400 degrees Fahrenheit) shining through the sulfuric acid clouds, which appear as much as 10 times darker than the bright gaps between clouds. This cloud layer is at about -30 degrees Fahrenheit, at a pressure of about one half Earth's surface atmospheric pressure.

Near the equator, the clouds appear fluffy and blocky; farther north, they are stretched out into east-west filiments by winds estimated at more than 70 meters per second (150 miles per hour), while the poles are capped by thick clouds at this altitude.

The Galileo project is managed for NASA's Office of Space Science and Applications by JPL; its mission is to study the planet Jupiter and its satellites and magnetosphere after multiple gravity-assist flybys at Venus and the Earth.

Last Update: 2005-Nov-29