Planetary Society logo
  • “Exploration is in our nature.” - Carl Sagan

Venus Express VMC atmospheric monitoring "seasons"

Venus Express VMC atmospheric monitoring "seasons"
Venus Express VMC atmospheric monitoring "seasons" Evolution of the local time at ascending node of the orbit (LTAN) over the mission (solid line). The sketch on the right shows the planet appearance as seen from the ascending node at different LTAN. Colored rectangles show the imaging campaigns used for cloud features tracking described in this paper. Shadowed areas mark night at ascending node. The optimal illumination conditions for VMC observations at ascending branch are between 10 and 14 h LTAN. (Figure 2 from Khatuntsev et al., 2013)