Microwave Observations of Venus with CLASS

• Published in: arXiv.org
• Main Authors: Dahal, Sumit, Brewer, Michael K, Akins, Alex B, Appel, John W, Bennett, Charles L, Bustos, Ricardo, Cleary, Joseph, Couto, Jullianna D, Datta, Rahul, Eimer, Joseph, Essinger-Hileman, Thomas, Iuliano, Jeffrey, Li, Yunyang, Marriage, Tobias A, Núñez, Carolina, Petroff, Matthew A, Reeves, Rodrigo, Karwan Rostem, Shi, Rui, Valle, Deniz A N, Watts, Duncan J, Weiland, Janet L, Wollack, Edward J, Xu, Zhilei
• Format: Paper Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ithaca Cornell University Library, arXiv.org 29.08.2023
• Subjects: Brightness temperature; Microwave frequencies; Physics - Earth and Planetary Astrophysics; Physics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics; Radio occultation
• ISSN: 2331-8422
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2304.07367

We report on the disk-averaged absolute brightness temperatures of Venus measured at four microwave frequency bands with the Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor (CLASS). We measure temperatures of 432.3 \(\pm\) 2.8 K, 355.6 \(\pm\) 1.3 K, 317.9 \(\pm\) 1.7 K, and 294.7 \(\pm\) 1.9 K for frequency bands centered at 38.8, 93.7, 147.9, and 217.5 GHz, respectively. We do not observe any dependence of the measured brightness temperatures on solar illumination for all four frequency bands. A joint analysis of our measurements with lower frequency Very Large Array (VLA) observations suggests relatively warmer (\(\sim\) 7 K higher) mean atmospheric temperatures and lower abundances of microwave continuum absorbers than those inferred from prior radio occultation measurements.