How can scientists study the meteorology of Venus from Earth since there are currently no missions to Venus? This is what a recent study published in Earth, Planets and Space hopes to address as a team of scientists led by the University of Tokyo investigated how Japanese meteorological satellites could be used to study Venusian atmospheric and weather patterns due to the lack of Venus missions. This study has the potential to help researchers develop new methods for studying other planetary bodies without having to send missions directly to study them.
For the study, the researchers used data obtained from the Japanese meteorological satellites Himawari-8 and Himawari-9, which were launched in October 2014 and November 2016, respectively, to study atmospheric weather patterns on Venus, specifically cloud-top temperatures, between July 2015 and February 2025. The goal of the study was to fill a decade-long gap of scientific data resulting from a lack of missions to Venus.
Composite image displaying the size of Venus from Earth. (Credit: 2025 Nishiyama et al. CC-BY-ND)
In the end, the researchers found that past observations of temperature changes conducted from the Japanese Akatsuki spacecraft that studied Venus from December 2015 to April 2024 were underestimated by 15 to 17 percent. They also confirmed longstanding models regarding how temperature changes with altitude in Venus’ atmosphere.
“I think that our novel approach in this study successfully opened a new avenue for long-term and multiband monitoring of solar system bodies,” said Dr. Gaku Nishiyama, who is a visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo and lead author of the study. “This includes the moon and Mercury, which I also study at present. We hope this study will enable us to assess physical and compositional properties, as well as atmospheric dynamics, and contribute to our further understanding of planetary evolution in general.”
What new discoveries about studying Venus from Earth will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: Earth, Planets and Space, EurekAlert!