Using the transit of Venus to probe the upper planetary atmosphere

Fabio Reale (), Angelo F. Gambino, Giuseppina Micela, Antonio Maggio, Thomas Widemann and Giuseppe Piccioni
Additional contact information
Fabio Reale: Università di Palermo
Angelo F. Gambino: Università di Palermo
Giuseppina Micela: INAF/Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo
Antonio Maggio: INAF/Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo
Thomas Widemann: Universitè de Versailles-Saint-Quentin, ESR/DYPAC EA 2449, Observatoire de Paris, LESIA, UMR CNRS 8109
Giuseppe Piccioni: INAF-IAPS (Istituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali)

Nature Communications, 2015, vol. 6, issue 1, 1-6

Abstract: Abstract During a planetary transit, atoms with high atomic number absorb short-wavelength radiation in the upper atmosphere, and the planet should appear larger during a primary transit observed in high-energy bands than in the optical band. Here we measure the radius of Venus with subpixel accuracy during the transit in 2012 observed in the optical, ultraviolet and soft X-rays with Hinode and Solar Dynamics Observatory missions. We find that, while Venus’s optical radius is about 80 km larger than the solid body radius (the top of clouds and haze), the radius increases further by >70 km in the extreme ultraviolet and soft X-rays. This measures the altitude of the densest ion layers of Venus’s ionosphere (CO2 and CO), useful for planning missions in situ, and a benchmark case for detecting transits of exoplanets in high-energy bands with future missions, such as the ESA Athena.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms8563 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:6:y:2015:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms8563

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms8563

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().