Mysterious night side of Venus revealed for first time

TOKYO: Scientists have characterised wind and cloud patterns of the night side of planet Venus for the first time, and found that it behaves very differently from the part facing the Sun.

The night side exhibits unexpected and previously-unseen cloud types, morphologies, and dynamics - some of which appear to be connected to features on the planet’s surface.

“This is the first time we’ve been able to characterise how the atmosphere circulates on the night side of Venus on a global scale,” said Javier Peralta of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

“While the atmospheric circulation on the planet’s dayside has been extensively explored, there was still much to discover about the night side. We found that the cloud patterns there are different to those on the dayside, and influenced by Venus’ topography,” said Peralta, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Venus’ atmosphere is dominated by strong winds that whirl around the planet far faster than Venus itself rotates.

This phenomenon, known as ‘super-rotation’, sees Venusian winds rotating up to 60 times faster than the planet below, pushing and dragging along clouds within the atmosphere as they go.

These clouds travel fastest at the upper cloud level, some 65 to 72 kilometres above the surface.

“We’ve spent decades studying these super-rotating winds by tracking how the upper clouds move on Venus’ dayside these are clearly visible in images acquired in ultraviolet light,” said Peralta.

“However, our models of Venus remain unable to reproduce this super-rotation, which clearly indicates that we might be missing some pieces of this puzzle,” he said.

“We focused on the night side because it had been poorly explored; we can see the upper clouds on the planet’s night side via their thermal emission, but it’s been difficult to observe them properly because the contrast in our infrared images was too low to pick up enough detail,” he added.

The team used the Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer (VIRTIS) on European Space Agency (ESA)’S Venus Express spacecraft to observe the clouds in the infrared.

“VIRTIS enabled us to see these clouds properly for the first time, allowing us to explore what previous teams could not and we discovered unexpected and surprising results,” adds Peralta.

Rather than capturing single images, VIRTIS gathered a ‘cube’ of hundreds of images of Venus acquired simultaneously at different wavelengths.

This allowed the team to combine numerous images to improve the visibility of the clouds, and see them at unprecedented quality.

The VIRTIS images thus reveal phenomena on Venus’ night side that have never before been seen on the dayside. PARIS: A London-bound British Airways flight was evacuated at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport today due to a security scare, but was later cleared for take-off, the airport’s operator said.

A spokesman for Aeroports de Paris said an incident “linked to security” had led staff to evacuate the 130 passengers onboard Heathrow-bound flight Ba303.“there was an incident that led authorities to decide to keep the plane on the ground and to disembark the passengers a few minutes before take-off, to carry out additional checks,” the spokesman said. The checks were completed and the flight was able to take off shortly before noon (1000 GMT), more than four hours late.

British Airways said in a statement: “The safety and security of our customers and crew is always our top priority.“we would never operate a flight unless it is safe to do so.” Britain has raised its terror threat level to “critical”. GAZA CITY: Hamas said on Sunday it had agreed to steps toward resolving a decade-long split with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah, announcing it would dissolve a body seen as a rival government and was ready to hold elections.

The statement comes after Hamas leaders held talks with Egyptian officials last week, and with the Gaza Strip run by the Palestinian Islamist movement facing a mounting humanitarian crisis.

Hamas said it had agreed to key demands made by Fatah: dissolving the so-called “administrative committee” created in March, while saying it was ready for elections and negotiations toward a unity government.

It called on the Palestinian Authority government based in the Israeli-occupied West Bank “to come to Gaza to exercise its functions and carry out its duties immediately”.

Hamas chief Ismail Haniya agreed to take such steps in talks with Egyptian officials in Cairo last week, a Hamas official has told AFP.

It was unclear, however, whether the steps would result in further concrete action toward ending the deep division with Fatah.

Hamas for now continues to run a de facto separate administration in the Gaza Strip and is in charge of the security forces there.

Previous attempts to resolve the split have repeatedly failed.

Abbas’s Fatah welcomed the announcement, saying it followed “extensive meetings” between its own representatives and Egyptian intelligence officials.

Fatah official Azzam alAhmad said a bilateral meeting with Hamas would be organised to begin working out a way forward. There will be tangible practical steps in the next few days, starting with the Palestinian national unity government resuming its work.