Venus climate orbiter Akatsuki tagged posts

An illustration of Akatsuki successfully tracking lower-altitude clouds during the night with its near-infrared camera IR2. Credit: Copyrighted image; PLANET-C Project Team

Observations by Japan’s Venus climate orbiter Akatsuki have revealed an equatorial jet in the lower to middle cloud layer of the planet’s atmosphere, a finding that could be pivotal to unraveling a phenomenon called superrotation. Venus rotates westward with a very low angular speed; it takes 243 Earth days to rotate once. The planet’s atmosphere rotates in the same direction but at much higher angular speeds, which is called “superrotation.” The planet is covered by thick clouds that extend from an altitude of about 45km-70km...