Abstract
The surface and lower atmosphere of Venus lie below long path-lengths of carbon dioxide and water vapour, and thick cloud layers that were, until recently, thought to be essentially opaque to electromagnetic radiation at wavelengths shorter than a few millimetres. It was unexpected, therefore, when Alien and Crawford1 announced the detection of measurable quantities of near-infrared radiation leaving the night side. Here we investigate the origin of this radiation by calculating theoretical spectra which we compare with the observations. It is found that the observed radiation can be fully accounted for by thermal emission from the deep atmosphere, and that the intensities suggest surprisingly low abundances for water vapour and carbon monoxide in those layers. These results have implications for probing the atmospheric structure and composition on Venus from the Galileo spacecraft, which is scheduled to make a close encounter with Venus in February 1990.
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