Another day later

This image, of the ‘eye of the hurricane’ on Venus was taken by the Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer (VIRTIS) on board Venus Express.

This picture shows a region in the venusian atmosphere about 60 km from the surface, at a wavelength of about 5 micrometres.

This image was acquired a day later (after the previous image). Here the shape of the vortex is stretched out in two opposite directions and is almost hourglass-shaped - this shape is called a dipole.

The yellow dot in the image indicates the location of the south pole.