Contact: Hakan Svedhem
hakan.svedhem@esa.int
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European Space Agency

Radiation From Below the Venusian Cloud Deck

Caption: The false-color view is the composite of three infrared images acquired by the Ultraviolet, Visible and Near-Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIRTIS) on board ESA's Venus Express on July 22, 2006, at a time interval of about 30 minutes from each other and from a distance of about 65 000 kilometers over the planet's surface. Venus was in the night side. The image, taken at a wavelength of 1.7-micrometer, shows the thermal radiation emitted from about 15-20 kilometres altitude. The brighter the colour (towards white), the more radiation comes from the surface, so the less cloudy the region in the line of sight between the view and the spacecraft is.

Credit: Credits: ESA/VIRTIS/INAF-IASF/Obs. de Paris-LESIA

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