The solar wind interaction with Venus

The Pioneer Venus Orbiter (PVO) mission has played a key role in establishing the nature of the solar wind interaction with Venus. Although earlier probes had determined that Venus presented an obstacle much smaller than the size of earth's magnetosphere to the solar wind, they did not carry out in situ measurements pertaining to solar wind interaction studies at low enough altitudes to determine why. They also did not provide datasets of sufficient duration to study the variability of the interaction of both short (one day) and long (solar cycle) timescales. The first 600 of the nearly 5000 orbits of PVO magnetometer data have been used to determine a very low upper limit on the intrinsic dipolar magnetic moment of Venus. The consequence of that low magnetic moment is that the solar wind interacts directly with the upper atmosphere and ionosphere. Relative to a dipolar field obstacle, the ionospheric obstacle is rather incompressible. A bow shock is observed to stand in front of the nearly Venus-sized ionospheric obstacle at a comparatively steady subsolar altitude of approximately 1.5 R(v) (Venus radii). This shock decelerates the supersonic solar wind plasma so that it can flow around the obstacle. It was found to change its average position in the terminator plane from about 2.4 R(v) to 2.1 R(v) as the solar cycle progressed from the 1978 orbit insertion near solar maximum through the 1986-87 solar minimum, and back again during the latest solar activity increase. Between the bow shock and the ionosphere proper, the slowed solar wind plasma flow diverges near the subsolar point and makes its way across the terminator where it reaccelerates and continues anti-Sunward. The solar wind magnetic field, which is in effect frozen into the flowing plasma, is distorted in this 'magnetosheath' region so that it appears to hang up or drape over the dayside ionosphere before it slips around with the flow. These features of the solar wind interaction are also seen when the obstacle is a dipole magnetic field, but there are two important distinctions. In the wake of the Venus obstacle one finds an induced magnetic tail composed of varying interplanetary fields rather than the constant fields of intrinsic origin. This magnetotail is further seen to be populated by Heavy (0+) ions that are evidently escaping from the planet at significant (approximately 10(exp -25) s(exp -1)) rates. These heavy ions are also observed in the dayside magnetosheath. The interpretation is that ions are produced by both photoionization and solar wind electron impact ionization of the upper neutral atmosphere that extends into the magnetosheath.