Venus Section Blog
Venus Discontinuity Imaged
8/7/2024

We have a sighting of Venus’ Atmospheric Discontinuity in an IR (820-920 nm) observation of Venus taken by ALPO member Luigi Morrone captured on July 17th. As seen in his image below, the atmospheric rift appears as a “gouge” in the cloud deck.

 This is a wonderful example of how amateur observers can continue to contribute to scientific investigation of our Solar System. As noted in an article in Sky & Telescope, “The quality and precision of the instrumentation available to amateur astronomers has improved markedly in recent years. They are now able to make really important contributions to the study of planetary bodies in our solar system that seriously complement what the professionals can do.”

We encourage all Venus section members to try to image the planet in IR to see if they can record the presence of this enigma in the planet’s atmosphere. All observations, whether including the discontinuity or not, should be sent to the section coordinator at venus@alpo-astronomy.org . Please follow the guidelines when submitting images.

Congratulations Luigi, job well done!


Urgent Request for Venus Observations and Images
8/3/2022
The newly discovered Cloud Discontinuity phenomenon was observed during the last few weeks by amateur astronomers António Cidadão in Portugal, Luigi Morrone in Italy, and Clyde Foster in South Africa, who have been contributing their observations to the ALPO Venus Section from 2022 May 15 through 25. An example of their observations accompanies this alert. The presence of the curious cloud discontinuity has been captured in their images. It is expected that the next observations of this phenomenon will occur again starting 2022 May 30 and about every 5 days afterwards. It will be important to determine when it will dissipate, so imaging with IR wavelength filters are needed. It is critically important to observe every possible day in order to cover the global situation of the middle level Venusian clouds. Imaging in UV may be useful in confirming whether this wave dissipates before arriving at the cloud tops of the planet. Observations should be sent without delay to the ALPO Venus Section at Venus@alpo-astronomy.org Important links with detailed background on the Venus Cloud Discontinuity are listed below for further information: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/13/2/348 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2020GL087221