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[39.02] A Study of Lower Atmosphere Dynamics And Search For Active Volcanism On Venus : Preliminary Work To \emph{Venus Express} Mission

E. Marcq, T. Encrenaz, B. Bézard (LESIA), M. Birlan (LESIA / IMCCE)

Although Venusian lower atmosphere is optically unreachable from Earth, near IR spectro-imagery provides an interesting way to study it : night-side ground thermal emission is strong in the K-window, in which CO₂ opacity is weak enough for other consituents to be detected. Our first results are abundance estimates for CO and OCS in function of latitude at several different longitudes. Whenever the S/N ratio is good enough, there appears to be a North/South asymmetry in CO distribution. Data were acquired at IRTF using SpeX spectro-imager, during Venusian quadratures in Feb. 2003 and in Aug. 2004 (more recently and not yet processed). The purpose of this work is to use these minor consituents as tracers to study the yet badly known dynamics of Venusian troposphere below the cloudy layers, as well as detecting ground-based sources of sulphured gases, thus helping in active volcanism detection.

The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: emmanuel.marcq@obspm.fr

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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 36 #4
© 2004. The American Astronomical Soceity.