Venusian cloud structures - Night view (1)

Original ESA caption:"Tracking cloud motion and starting to characterise the wind speed is an exercise that the Venus Express scientists have already started. A spectacular night view of the mid to low atmospheric layers over low latitudes (between 20º and 90 º South) by VIRTIS, show clouds being clearly pushed by winds.

"We can now make a first qualitative assessment of the wind fields and circulation, which is comfortably matching with previous measurement from the Galileo mission over the North Pole", said Giuseppe Piccioni.
"We are now collecting more data from different atmospheric depths, to be able to provide the first precise numbers, possibly in the near future".