The inner magnetosheath of Venus: An analogue for Earth?

The unmagnetized planets provide examples of solar wind interactions that are free from the complications associated with magnetopause reconnection and with sensitive obstacle response to incident solar wind pressure changes. Using the Venus magnetosheath as a testbed, we search for evidence of standing slow mode 'transitions' in the inner subsolar region as reported for Earth by Song et al. Although the system at Venus is much smaller in scale, the Pioneer Venus Orbiter magnetometer data indicate that for perpendicular interplanetary magnetic field conditions the general behavior of the plasma in the magnetosheath is as expected from the simple depletion layer model. In examples of magnetic field measurements chosen for the apparently steady interplanetary conditions during the spacecraft pass, there is no clear evidence for a slow mode structure near the ionopause as might be expected on the basis of the Song et al. study. The implication is that some aspect of the Venus magnetosheath (such as its small size or the presence of local planetary ion production) makes it physically different from Earth's, that the conditions of the magnetosheath during Song's study differed significantly from those in the Venus study, or that the observations of Song et al. do not represent a steady state.