Happy new year to all my readers and followers. I hope you have had a good festive break. My and wife and I went on a cruise to the Canary Islands, Lisbon and Madeira over Christmas to get away from the cold and damp North West of England. During our holiday I was hoping to do some star gazing from the upper decks, but sadly the lights on the ship and the full Moon were just too bright to enable me to make out the fainter stars 😦 and I was unable to see the Milky Way. At least we saw some sunshine during the daylight hours on this trip!
Images of the month January 2016
For the next few months, in addition to my normal posts, I will be posting a shorter “image of the month” post. My image of the month for January 2016 is actually one quite ordinary image from NASA plus two very much more exciting images from the Japanese Akatsuki spacecraft, which were produced shortly after it went into orbit around Venus last month. For the full story on this spacecraft click here. In what is known as ‘visible light’ (see below), Venus is a fairly featureless object:
Venus as seen from Earth in visible light – Image from NASA
The wavelength of the different colours of light is measured in units called nanometres, normally abbreviated to nm. 1 nm is equal to one billionth of a metre. The human eye is sensitive to light with wavelengths in the range of 380 nm to 750 nm and we call this range of wavelengths ‘visible light’. However, at different wavelengths it possible to see structure in the clouds on Venus. The following images were taken by Akatsuki at different wavelengths.
This one was taken in ultraviolet light at a wavelength of around 300nm, which is a shorter wavelength than the human eye can see:
Venus in UV light- Image from JAXA
This one was taken in infrared light at a wavelength of around 2,000 nm, which is this time a longer wavelength than the human eye can see:
Venus in IR light -Image from JAXA
I hope you like these images, and that we can look forward to many more images of Venus from Akatsuki over the forthcoming months.
Explaining Science 
Geek, I’ve seen articles on the temperature differentials in the Venusian atmosphere, but has anyone looked at the pressure variations in the atmosphere of Venus?
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Hi an interesting question.
As far as I am aware there has been no detailed study of the pressure variations in the Venusian atmosphere. However, as spacecraft have descended through the atmosphere they have measured the increase in pressure with decreasing altitude.
A simplified version of how the pressure and temperature vary with altitude is given the diagram in my recent post
http://thesciencegeek.org/2015/11/24/venus-a-mysterious-world/
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The pictures are interesting. The IR one is especially interesting in that it appears there’s a “wrinkle” in the clouds. I realize that’s just because of differences in the temperatures but I’ll call it a wrinkle anyway. Might be inspiration for a SF story.
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An interesting observation
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Glad you got away and were at least able to see the day star 😉 Safe travels back to England!
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I hope you enjoyed the cruise anyway. Too bad about the lights and the moon. May 2016 bring you clear transparent skies.
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Thank you, all the best to you too.
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