Venus cloud-tracked and doppler velocimetry winds from CFHT/ESPaDOnS and Venus Express/VIRTIS in April 2014

Abstract

We present new coordinated observations and measurements of the wind amplitude and its variability at Venus cloud-tops based on the two complementary techniques of Ground-based Doppler velocimetry (Widemann et al., 2007, 2008; Machado et al., 2012, 2014) and cloud-tracked winds using ESA Venus Express/ VIRTIS-M imaging at 0.38 µm (Drossart et al., 2007; Sanchez-Lavega et al., 2008; Hueso et al., 2012; Machado et al., 2014). Cloud-tracked winds trace the true atmospheric motion also responsible for the Doppler-Fizeau shift of the solar radiation on the dayside by super-rotating moving cloud-tops with respect to both the Sun and the observer (Machado et al., 2014), and based on this complementarity, we performed a new coordinated campaign in April 2014 combining both Venus Express observations and ground-based Doppler wind measurements on the dayside of Venus’ cloud tops at Canada-France-Hawaii telescope at a phase angle Φ=(76±0.3)∘. The analysis and results show (1) additional confirmation of the coherence, and complementarity, in the results provided by these techniques, on both spatial and temporal time scales of the two methods; (2) first-time estimation of the meridional component of the wind in another planet using the Doppler velocimetry technique, with evidence of a symmetrical, poleward meridional Hadley flow in both hemispheres of v¯m = 22± 15.5 ms−1; (3) spatial and temporal variability of the zonal flow with latitude and local time, with a significant increase of wind amplitude near the morning terminator previously reported in Feb. 2011 observations.