Free Search (10899 images) Oxygen makes Venus glow at night
Rating: 5.00/5 (1 votes cast) - Title Oxygen makes Venus glow at
night - Released 11/04/2007 2:35 pm - Copyright ESA/VIRTIS/INAF-
IASF/Obs. de Paris-LESIA This grey-scale image was taken on 3
June 2006 by the Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging
Spectrometer (VIRTIS) onboard ESA’s Venus Express, at a distance
of 68 000 kilometres from the planet’s surface. The image shows
the oxygen airglow in the night-side of Venus, appearing as the
bright features similar to ‘clouds’ visible at the bottom of the
image, and also visible as the white ring surrounding the
planet’s disk (limb). The oxygen airglow is fully detectable
only at specific infrared wavelengths. This image was obtained
at 1.27 micrometres. The fluorescence of the airglow is produced
when oxygen atoms, ‘migrating’ from the day-side to the night-
side of the atmosphere of Venus under the push of the so-called
sub-solar and anti-solar atmospheric circulation, recombine into
molecular oxygen (or ‘O