No statistical evidence of lightning in Venus night-side atmosphere from VIRTIS-Venus Express Visible observations

Journal
Date Issued
2016
Author(s)
Cardesín Moinelo, A.
•
Abildgaard, S.
•
García Muñoz, A.
•
•
DOI
Abstract
In this study we describe a dedicated analysis of luminous transient events on Venus night side atmosphere with the visible channel of the VIRTIS instrument (280-1100 nm), this being the most comprehensive search of lightning conducted so far with Venus Express data. Our search results in thousands of signal detections, but unfortunately they can be all explained by cosmic rays impinging on the detector, and further statistical analysis shows that all of the events are randomly distributed along the spectral dimension, therefore not showing any clear evidence of signal coming from lightning emission in the Venus atmosphere. This does not exclude the existence of lightning, but imposes some constraints on their occurrence that are important for future research.
Volume
277
Start page
395
Uri
Url
Issn Identifier
0019-1035
Ads BibCode
2016Icar..277..395C
Rights
open.access
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