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Since Venus Express' arrival at our neighbouring planet in 2006, the VIRTIS (Visible and InfraRed Thermal Imaging Spectrometer) instrument has been collecting data on the temperature of the planet's atmosphere and cloud decks, finding that the polar region's dynamics follow rules of their own.
A north polar vortex was observed as early as the 1979 Pioneer Venus mission, but Venus Express soon found its double-eyed southern hemisphere twin. Covering a diameter of around 3,000 kilometres, it rotates almost like a solid body. As the Venus Express mission progressed, however, a variety of vortex shapes have been seen, with the double-eye feature now having apparently disappeared.
"We had ironically observed it in a dipole configuration right at the beginning of the mission, but we soon discovered that this was just a coincidence, since the dipole in reality is not a stable feature on Venus but just one shape among others," says Giuseppe Piccioni.