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Stationary Features at the Cloud Top of Venus Observed by Ultraviolet Imager Onboard Akatsuki
Author(s) -
Kitahara Takehiko,
Imamura Takeshi,
Sato Takao M.,
Yamazaki Atsushi,
Lee Yeon Joo,
Yamada Manabu,
Watanabe Shigeto,
Taguchi Makoto,
Fukuhara Tetsuya,
Kouyama Toru,
Murakami Shinya,
Hashimoto George L.,
Ogohara Kazunori,
Kashimura Hiroki,
Horinouchi Takeshi,
Takagi Masahiro
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: planets
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2169-9100
pISSN - 2169-9097
DOI - 10.1029/2018je005842
Subject(s) - venus , longwave , noon , ultraviolet , infrared , wavelength , remote sensing , cloud computing , surface gravity , geology , physics , optics , environmental science , atmospheric sciences , astronomy , radiative transfer , astrobiology , spectral line , computer science , operating system
Stationary features indicative of topographic gravity waves were identified at the cloud top of Venus with the 283‐nm channel of the Ultraviolet Imager (UVI) onboard Akatsuki, and their geographical and local time dependences were studied. At this wavelength the absorption by SO 2 dominates. To extract stationary structures with respect to the surface, we averaged multiple images to smooth out moving features and applied high‐pass filtering to emphasize small structures. We found that stationary features appear exclusively above highlands and that they tend to appear between noon and evening. The stationary features seem to be synchronized with those observed in the cloud top temperature maps taken by the Longwave Infrared Camera (LIR). It was shown using a gravity wave model that the scale height of SO 2 should be smaller than that of the cloud around the cloud top to reproduce the observed phase relationship between the stationary features seen in the Ultraviolet Imager and Longwave Infrared Camera images.