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Posted by BradGuth on September 9, 2007, 4:20 pm
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500 Earth days of seeing hardly anything being usenet discussed or
even given a good roasting about Venus. It's as though those MIB Yids
as official naysayers are in total control of most all that's usenet.
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Venus_Express/SEM26GLJC0F_1.html#subhead1
Perfectly good though selective science that's still without sharing
any PFS instrument data. Rather odd there has been no active topic
contributions, as though Venus is somewhat taboo/nondisclosure rated.
Would anyone within this anti-think-tank of usenet naysay land, in
spite of whatever silly mindset, like to review an active Venus
planetology that's offering a rather nifty fluid arch?
If that's not good enough, I've got a list of Venus related topics to
pick from, as well as unlimited personal rants and otherwise
countless
notions with pesky questions to go along with most of those topics.
- Brad Guth -
On Sep 4, 3:21 pm, baa...@earthlink.net wrote:
> http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMLRBMPQ5F_index_0.html
>
> 500 days atVenus, and the surprises keep coming
> European Space Agency
> 3 September 2007
>
> VenusExpress has now orbited Earth's twin for 500 Earth days,
> completing as many orbits. While the satellite maintains steady and
> excellent performance, the planet continues to surprise and amaze us.
>
> In spite of experiencing a challenging environment,VenusExpress is
> in
> an excellent condition. It receives four times the amount of solar
> radiation as its sister spacecraft, Mars Express, but modifications to
> the spacecraft design have worked just as intended and operation has
> been very stable.
>
> Many different activities happen on board with each orbit: instruments
> are switched on and off, they change modes and targets and the
> spacecraft checks out and monitors its subsystems more or less
> continuously. The few anomalies that occurred were quickly resolved by
> vigilant spacecraft controllers.
>
> On 18 August,Venuswas at the shortest distance from Earth. The
> planet
> was also aligned with Earth and the Sun. Given the short distance, all
> instruments worked at full speed and the communication system at its
> maximum. Back on Earth, data was downloaded without difficulty.
>
> This situation is very different from whenVenusis on the far side of
> the Sun. Due to the large distance, the rate at which data can be
> downloaded plummets to 22 kbit/s, a tenth of the maximum. At such
> times,
> competition between the instruments can be quite tough. Despite this,
> an
> impressive amount of data - about 1 Terabits, or one million million
> bits - has been transmitted to Earth over the first 500 days.
>
> Hakan Svedhem,VenusExpress Project Scientist says, "The scientists
> analysing the data have a challenging but exciting task ahead." They
> will have to archive the data and extract the most important detail
> from
> this immense collection of images, spectra and profiles of
> temperature,
> pressure and chemical composition.
>
> While early results have already been published, some of the first
> detailed analyses are now being completed and will soon be published
> in
> acclaimed scientific journals.
>
> Among many other findings that have surprised scientists,Venus'
> atmosphere seems extremely fickle.
>
> Recent observations with the Visible and Near-Infrared Mapping
> Spectrometer (VIRTIS), have shown thatVenus' atmospheric structure
> changes quite rapidly, from day to day.
>
> Giuseppe Piccioni, co-Principal Investigator for VIRTIS on boardVenus
> Express says, "It seems that the mid latitudes form a sort of
> transition
> region with mostly laminar flow. Moving equatorward, there is more
> convective flow in the atmosphere, whereas the polar region is
> dominated
> by huge vortices." Laminar flow is where the fluid (gas or liquid)
> travels smoothly or in regular paths. This is in contrast to turbulent
> flow, in which the fluid undergoes irregular fluctuations and mixing.
>
> The meteorology of the planet, including its deep atmosphere is highly
> variable. "Although the configuration of the flow is similar, the
> intensity of turbulence changes significantly from one orbit to the
> next," adds Pierre Drossart, co-Principal Investigator for VIRTIS.
>
> The polar region or the 'black hole' seen in the images is where the
> polar dipole dominates. The polar dipole is the name given to a giant
> double-vortex, each of which is about 2000 km across, similar to the
> eye
> of a hurricane. The double-vortex has been seen at both the north and
> south poles, rotating in opposite directions (clockwise at the north
> pole and counter-clockwise at the south pole). Observations withVenus
> Express show that the vortex at the south pole also changes its shape
> rapidly, from one orbit to the next.
>
> For more information:
>
> Giuseppe Piccioni, VIRTIS co-Principal Investigator, IASF-INAF, Rome,
> Italy
> Email: Giuseppe.Piccioni @ iasf-roma.inaf.it
>
> Pierre Drossart, VIRTIS co-Principal Investigator, Observatoire de
> Paris, France
> Email: Pierre.Drossart @ obspm.fr
>
> Hakan Svedhem,ESAVenusExpress Project Scientist
> Email: Hakan.Svedhem @esa.int
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