Behind the veil of Venus

Venus is hot, with an average temperature of 460° Celsius: And even at the peaks of its highest mountains, it's only around 30° cooler. However, we do not know very much more about the surface of Venus, because the planet is shrouded by an around 100km thick veil, made of almost pure carbon dioxide that is opaque to most light frequencies. Dr. Jörn Helbert from the Institute of Planetary Research at the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt is now taking a look behind this veil. Because the ESA Venus-Express probe has been orbiting the planet for a good 12 months and is equipped with the VIRTIS spectrometer, partly developed at the DLR in Berlin. Helbert and his colleagues have built a data pipeline for automatically analysing the data produced by VIRTIS. The spectrometer has a total of 120 optical channels that work with precise electromagnetic frequencies. Three of these channels look all the way through the tiny "optical windows" of the greenhouse layers down to the surface. From the thermal signals that are emitted from the ground, Helbert is able to measure the exact surface temperature and to scan the morphology. In particular, he now wants to find out whether Venus has any active volcanoes that continue changing the face of the planet today. And he can even complement his measurements with data supplied by the US Messenger probe as it flies past Venus on its way to Mercury - "a unique opportunity," believes the planetary expert.