That vital data comes from ESA’s Venus Express spacecraft, which started orbiting around Venus in 2006 (April) before being crashed into the planet in 2014 (December). Led by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), this significant study was published in Nature.

We already knew that Venus has a strange super-rotation, where its winds can spin 60 times faster than the planet. But it appears that on the night side, this process is even more destructive and chaotic than on the day side.

"This study challenges our current understanding of climate modelling and, specifically, the super-rotation, which is a key phenomenon seen at Venus," said Håkan Svedhem, ESA Project Scientist for Venus Express, in a statement.

The team found that night side clouds form large, irregular patterns, dominated by waves that appear to stand still in the atmosphere, called stationary waves. In January this year, a huge stationary wave was seen on Venus by the Akatsuki spacecraft, stretching for more than 10,000 kilometers (6,200 miles).

In this study, the scientists used data from the Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer (VIRTIS) to study the night side, using infrared to study the clouds. They found they did not move with the atmosphere, an unexpected discovery that was later confirmed by Akatsuki.

Stationary waves are thought to form over mountainous or other high-elevation regions. Weirdly though, in this data stationary waves were missing in the intermediate and lower cloud levels, up to about 50 kilometers (31 miles) above the surface.

Akatsuki is continuing to orbit Venus, so it may be able to shed some light on some of the weird things going on with the planet. With the death of Cassini today, Venus is now one of only three planets aside from Earth – the others being Mars and Jupiter – that have a human spacecraft in orbit.

This image shows the night side of Venus in thermal infrared.

Its engine blew up seven years ago, and by all rights the Japanese spacecraft Akatsuki shouldn't have survived. However, engineers at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) refused to give up. The spacecraft not only survived its deep-space catastrophe, but it's now safely in orbit around Venus and producing breathtaking images of swirling clouds at multiple levels within the planet's dense atmosphere that have never been glimpsed before.

Scientists from the European Space Agency's Venus Express spacecraft, which circled the planet from 2006 to 2015, were amazed by newly released Akatsuki images and pronounced them "fabulous." Two of these appear below.

Akatsuki was supposed to reach Venus and enter orbit on December 6, 2010, using an innovative ceramic thruster. Unfortunately, the crucial engine firing failed in dramatic fashion, when inadequate pressurant flow into the engine caused the thruster temperature to increase until the nozzle cracked. The spacecraft autonomously shut down its broken engine only partway through the intended orbit insertion burn, and it sailed right past Venus.

After determining that the engine wasn't salvageable, the resourceful team at JAXA vented all the remaining propellant to lighten the spacecraft and developed a brave plan to attempt orbit entry a second time. To make a long and dramatic story short, they succeeded.

Akatsuki has been at Venus since December 9, 2015, and in its final science orbit since April 4, 2016. This very elliptical orbit has a period of 10.5 days, traveling from a periapsis of around 10,000 km to an apoapsis of 360,000 km. Project scientist Takeshi Imamura likens the mission to a weather satellite for Venus, perched high above its swirling clouds, with a multi-day vantage point on cloud motions.

Akatsuki carries five cameras to view Venus in different wavelengths, each one penetrating to a different depth within Venus' deep atmosphere. These imagers have higher resolution than those on ESA's Venus Express.

This view of Venus was acquired by Akatsuki's spacecraft's IR2 camera, which observes—among other things—the warm glow of the planet's atmosphere on its night side.

Akatsuki's ultraviolet imager records high-altitude clouds, illuminated by sunlight, at the wavelengths of 285 and 365 nanometers. Drifting along at elevations of 65 to 75 km, these clouds consist mostly of sulfuric acid (H2SO4). Their patterns are outlined by the presence of an as-yet-unidentified "ultraviolet absorber" that is especially dark in the 365-nm images.

Meanwhile, the shorter-wavelength (285-nm) images are more sensitive to the presence of sulfur dioxide SO2) that rises from lower down, surviving in the upper atmosphere only briefly before solar ultraviolet radiation breaks it up and atmospheric chemistry recombines it into other molecules.

This view of Venus was acquired by the Japanese Akatsuki spacecraft's IR2 camera, which observes—among other things—the "warmth" of the planet's atmosphere on its nocturnal side.

The infrared cameras (IR1 and IR2) need no sunlight to see Venus. They observe in wavelengths at which the hot atmosphere radiates thermally. IR2 has two channels, 1.74 and 2.26 microns, which detect heat at a still-high 48 to 55 km above the surface. Seen at these wavelengths, dark features are higher-altitude clouds that block Akatsuki's view of the glow of the warm atmosphere lower down. Researchers suspect that the motions of clouds at these mid-level altitudes are more sensitive to topography lying far below.

Unfortunately, the two infrared cameras (IR1 and IR2) suffered an electrical fault in December 2016. But the long-wave infrared (LIR) imager, Lyman-alpha camera (LAC), and ultraviolet imager (UVI) all still function.

Late in 2017, the mission made its first release of science data to the Akatsuki data archive. That's when Damia Bouic, an amateur image processor in France, delved into the raw image files and surfaced with the data that she used to make these remarkable views of Venus as seen through the ultraviolet and infrared cameras.

This view of Venus was acquired by the Japanese Akatsuki spacecraft's IR2 camera, which observes—among other things—the "warmth" of the planet's atmosphere on its nocturnal side.

Its engine blew up seven years ago, and by all rights the Japanese spacecraft Akatsuki shouldn't have survived. However, engineers at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) refused to give up. The spacecraft not only survived its deep-space catastrophe, but it's now safely in orbit around Venus and producing breathtaking images of swirling clouds at multiple levels within the planet's dense atmosphere that have never been glimpsed before.

Scientists from the European Space Agency's Venus Express spacecraft, which circled the planet from 2006 to 2015, were amazed by newly released Akatsuki images and pronounced them "fabulous." Two of these appear below.

Akatsuki was supposed to reach Venus and enter orbit on December 6, 2010, using an innovative ceramic thruster. Unfortunately, the crucial engine firing failed in dramatic fashion, when inadequate pressurant flow into the engine caused the thruster temperature to increase until the nozzle cracked. The spacecraft autonomously shut down its broken engine only partway through the intended orbit insertion burn, and it sailed right past Venus.

This image shows the night side of Venus in thermal infrared.

After determining that the engine wasn't salvageable, the resourceful team at JAXA vented all the remaining propellant to lighten the spacecraft and developed a brave plan to attempt orbit entry a second time. To make a long and dramatic story short, they succeeded.

Akatsuki has been at Venus since December 9, 2015, and in its final science orbit since April 4, 2016. This very elliptical orbit has a period of 10.5 days, traveling from a periapsis of around 10,000 km to an apoapsis of 360,000 km. Project scientist Takeshi Imamura likens the mission to a weather satellite for Venus, perched high above its swirling clouds, with a multi-day vantage point on cloud motions.

Akatsuki carries five cameras to view Venus in different wavelengths, each one penetrating to a different depth within Venus' deep atmosphere. These imagers have higher resolution than those on ESA's Venus Express.

This view of Venus was acquired by Akatsuki's spacecraft's IR2 camera, which observes—among other things—the warm glow of the planet's atmosphere on its night side.

Akatsuki's ultraviolet imager records high-altitude clouds, illuminated by sunlight, at the wavelengths of 285 and 365 nanometers. Drifting along at elevations of 65 to 75 km, these clouds consist mostly of sulfuric acid (H2SO4). Their patterns are outlined by the presence of an as-yet-unidentified "ultraviolet absorber" that is especially dark in the 365-nm images.

Meanwhile, the shorter-wavelength (285-nm) images are more sensitive to the presence of sulfur dioxide SO2) that rises from lower down, surviving in the upper atmosphere only briefly before solar ultraviolet radiation breaks it up and atmospheric chemistry recombines it into other molecules.

This view of Venus was acquired by the Japanese Akatsuki spacecraft's IR2 camera, which observes—among other things—the "warmth" of the planet's atmosphere on its nocturnal side.

The infrared cameras (IR1 and IR2) need no sunlight to see Venus. They observe in wavelengths at which the hot atmosphere radiates thermally. IR2 has two channels, 1.74 and 2.26 microns, which detect heat at a still-high 48 to 55 km above the surface. Seen at these wavelengths, dark features are higher-altitude clouds that block Akatsuki's view of the glow of the warm atmosphere lower down. Researchers suspect that the motions of clouds at these mid-level altitudes are more sensitive to topography lying far below.

Unfortunately, the two infrared cameras (IR1 and IR2) suffered an electrical fault in December 2016. But the long-wave infrared (LIR) imager, Lyman-alpha camera (LAC), and ultraviolet imager (UVI) all still function.

Late in 2017, the mission made its first release of science data to the Akatsuki data archive. That's when Damia Bouic, an amateur image processor in France, delved into the raw image files and surfaced with the data that she used to make these remarkable views of Venus as seen through the ultraviolet and infrared cameras.

This view of Venus was acquired by the Japanese Akatsuki spacecraft's IR2 camera, which observes—among other things—the "warmth" of the planet's atmosphere on its nocturnal side.

“These results show ancient Venus may have been a very different place than it is today,” siad Michael Way, a researcher at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. Venus today is a hellish world. It has a crushing carbon dioxide atmosphere 90 times as thick as Earth’s. There is almost no water vapor.

Temperatures reach 864 degrees Fahrenheit (462 degrees Celsius) at its surface.

Venus may have had a shallow liquid-water ocean and habitable surface temperatures for up to 2 billion years of its early history, according to computer modeling of the planet’s ancient climate by scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. The findings, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, were obtained with a model similar to the type used to predict future climate change on Earth.

“Many of the same tools we use to model climate change on Earth can be adapted to study climates on other planets, both past and present,” said Michael Way, a researcher at GISS and the paper’s lead author. The research was done as part of NASA’s Planetary Science Astrobiology program through the Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS) program, which seeks to search for life on planets orbiting other stars, or exoplanets, by combining insights from the fields of astrophysics, planetary science, heliophysics, and Earth science.

Scientists long have theorized that Venus formed out of ingredients similar to Earth’s, but followed a different evolutionary path. Measurements by NASA’s Pioneer mission to Venus in the 1980s first suggested Venus originally may have had an ocean.

However, Venus is closer to the sun than Earth and receives far more sunlight. As a result, the planet’s early ocean evaporated, water-vapor molecules were broken apart by ultraviolet radiation, and hydrogen escaped to space.

With no water left on the surface, carbon dioxide built up in the atmosphere, leading to a so-called runaway greenhouse effect that created present conditions.

Previous studies have shown that how fast a planet spins on its axis affects whether it has a habitable climate. A day on Venus is 117 Earth days. Until recently, it was assumed that a thick atmosphere like that of modern Venus was required for the planet to have today’s slow rotation rate.

However, newer research has shown that a thin atmosphere like that of modern Earth could have produced the same result.

That ultimately means an ancient Venus with an Earth-like atmosphere could have had the same rotation rate it has today. Another factor that impacts a planet’s climate is topography. The GISS team postulated ancient Venus had more dry land overall than Earth, especially in the tropics. That limits the amount of water evaporated from the oceans and, as a result, the greenhouse effect by water vapor.

This type of surface appears ideal for making a planet habitable; there seems to have been enough water to support abundant life, with sufficient land to reduce the planet’s sensitivity to changes from incoming sunlight. Way and his GISS colleagues simulated conditions of a hypothetical early Venus with an atmosphere similar to Earth’s, a day as long as Venus’ current day, and a shallow ocean consistent with early data from the Pioneer spacecraft.

The researchers added information about Venus’ topography from radar measurements taken by NASA’s Magellan mission in the 1990s, and filled the lowlands with water, leaving the highlands exposed as Venusian continents. The study also factored in an ancient sun that was up to 30 percent dimmer. Even so, ancient Venus still received about 40 percent more sunlight than Earth does today.

“In the GISS model’s simulation, Venus’ slow spin exposes its dayside to the sun for almost two months at a time,” co-author and fellow GISS scientist Anthony Del Genio said.

“This warms the surface and produces rain that creates a thick layer of clouds, which acts like an umbrella to shield the surface from much of the solar heating. The result is mean climate temperatures that are actually a few degrees cooler than Earth’s today.”

The findings have direct implications for future NASA missions, such as the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and James Webb Space Telescope, which will try to detect possible habitable planets and characterize their atmospheres.

Via DailyGalaxy

For the first time, scientists have studied clouds and wind on the night side of Venus. And they’ve found that it's very different from the day side.

That data comes from ESA’s Venus Express spacecraft, which entered orbit around Venus in April 2006 before being crashed into the planet in December 2014. Led by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the study was published in Nature.

We already knew that Venus has a weird super-rotation, where its winds can rotate 60 times faster than the planet. But it seems that on the night side, this process is even more chaotic than on the day side.

"This study challenges our current understanding of climate modelling and, specifically, the super-rotation, which is a key phenomenon seen at Venus," said Håkan Svedhem, ESA Project Scientist for Venus Express, in a statement.

The team found that night side clouds form large, irregular patterns, dominated by waves that appear to stand still in the atmosphere, called stationary waves. In January this year, a huge stationary wave was seen on Venus by the Akatsuki spacecraft, stretching for more than 10,000 kilometers (6,200 miles).

In this study, the scientists used data from the Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer (VIRTIS) to study the night side, using infrared to study the clouds. They found they did not move with the atmosphere, an unexpected discovery that was later confirmed by Akatsuki.

Stationary waves are thought to form over mountainous or other high-elevation regions. Weirdly though, in this data stationary waves were missing in the intermediate and lower cloud levels, up to about 50 kilometers (31 miles) above the surface.

"We expected to find these waves in the lower levels because we see them in the upper levels, and we thought that they rose up through the cloud from the surface," co-author Ricardo Hueso of the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao, Spain, in the statement. "It's an unexpected result for sure, and we'll all need to revisit our models of Venus to explore its meaning."

Akatsuki is continuing to orbit Venus, so it may be able to shed some light on some of the weird things going on with the planet. With the death of Cassini, Venus is now one of only three planets aside from Earth – the others being Mars and Jupiter – that have a human spacecraft in orbit.

Venera was a series of satellites launched by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s to study Venus’ environment. It was also the program aimed at returning the first images of the surface of another planet. Over the course of the program, thirteen probes successfully reached Venus and transmitted data about planetary neighbor, eight landed successfully on the surface, and four returned pretty outstanding images. (Video at the bottom)

 

Venera 14 photo of the Venusian surface.

Watch the video below for details:

Venera was a series of satellites launched by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s to study Venus’ environment. It was also the program aimed at returning the first images of the surface of another planet. Over the course of the program, thirteen probes successfully reached Venus and transmitted data about planetary neighbour, eight landed successfully on the surface, and four returned pretty outstanding images.

image by Venera 13

DON'T MISS Here's What NASA Saw When it Landed on Saturn's Largest Moon

The view from Venera 13's left camera

Venera 14 photo of the Venusian surface.

Is there evidence of other life in our solar system?  Berkeley's SETI research center director Andrew Siemion thinks so. It is a good possibility that Mars or Venus could have been inhabited billions of years ago. Our search has only just begun. We have barely scratched the surface.

As with our own planet lying deep beneath the mantle are ancient artifacts. Evidence of technological civilizations. Covered by soil and rock. Buried by only years of mud and sand and sea. His research has been published in Nature.

Venus - when imaged in ultraviolet wavebands - takes on a blue colour. Image Credit: NASA

As our understanding of the past is unmasked, we grow in the knowledge of other species. Other massive creatures that existed in prehistoric times. Only to have gone extinct, by some cosmic catastrophe. Possibility a meteor hitting the earth. Or shifting in the tectonic plates causing a massive disaster for life on earth billions of years ago. Erasing techno signatures of an indigenous species.

Astronomer Jason Wright at Penn State believes that there may be artifacts of it in our Solar System. That have survived and are buried under the surface of Mars or Venus. Or other celestial bodies in ours or other solar systems.

Astrobiology asks extinct or extant life. Evidence exists in geological records that techno signatures can be found. It maybe that Venus was a thriving city at one time. This is an old concept, Wright noted that in literature dating from 1890's.

Now astronomers are mapping the moons of Jupiter. Europa and Enceladus looking and studying the subsurface of the oceans. That an indigenous technological species may have existed in our solar system. And that a supernova caused a mass extinction. Or possibility gamma rays of epic proportion. 

Wright thinks we may have overlooked things in our own geological records as natural phenomena. They may have just died out, as some species do.

Enjoy this, because we'll possibly never see it again. The Hinode Solar Optical Telescope has taken a spectacular 'once in a lifetime' picture of Venus passing in between the Earth and the Sun. Venus' transit across the surface of the Sun is -- in human expressions at least extremely rare, taking place every 115 years. Luckily the Hinode Earth-orbiting satellite was able to capture the complete event by means of its Solar Optical Telescope. Researchers led by Fabio Reale of the University of Palermo then inspected the pictures, noticing the ways in which the Sun's light interacts with Venus' atmosphere. The team examined the variances in size of Venus through some wavelengths, by detecting the changes they should be able to produce a more accurate picture of the elements found on the planet's surface.

Pesnell said “The planet appeared very round in all wavelengths. If the transition from day to night were different from the transition from night to day, you would expect a bulge in the atmosphere on one side of the planet.”