Identification of OSSO as a near-UV absorber in the Venusian atmosphere
Abstract
The planet Venus exhibits atmospheric absorption in the 320–400 nm wavelength range produced by unknown chemistry. We investigate electronic transitions in molecules that may exist in the atmosphere of Venus. We identify two different S_2O_2 isomers, cis-OSSO and trans-OSSO, which are formed in significant amounts and are removed predominantly by near-UV photolysis. We estimate the rate of photolysis of cis- and trans-OSSO in the Venusian atmosphere and find that they are good candidates to explain the enigmatic 320–400 nm near-UV absorption. Between 58 and 70 km, the calculated OSSO concentrations are similar to those of sulfur monoxide (SO), generally thought to be the second most abundant sulfur oxide on Venus.
Additional Information
© 2016 American Geophysical Union. Received 30 MAR 2016; Accepted 21 SEP 2016; Published online 3 NOV 2016. We thank Yuk L. Yung for his assistance in interpreting the contribution of OSSO to the observed near-UV opacity at Venus. We thank Veronica Vaida, Theo Kurten, Stephan P. A. Sauer, and Matthew S. Johnson for helpful discussions and Tyler Robinson for providing the digitalized files of the unknown absorber from Haus et al. [2015, Figure 18]. We acknowledge the financial support from the Danish Center for Scientific Computing, University of Copenhagen and the Center for Exploitation of Solar Energy founded by the University of Copenhagen. The data used are listed in the supporting information.Attached Files
Published - Frandsen_et_al-2016-Geophysical_Research_Letters.pdf
Supplemental Material - grl55057-sup-0001-supplementary.pdf
Supplemental Material - grl55057-sup-0002-TableS1.csv
Supplemental Material - grl55057-sup-0003-TableS2.csv
Files
Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 73255
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20170105-084008003
- Danish Center for Scientific Computing
- University of Copenhagen
- Created
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2017-01-05Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-11Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences