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Akatsuki at Venus: The First Year of Scientific Operation

Edited by: Masato Nakamura, Dmitri Titov, Kevin McGouldrick, Pierre Drossart, Jean-Loup Bertaux, Huixin Liu

This special issue calls for papers of instrumentation and scientific results related to the Akatsuki Venus mission. The core of the issue will be characterization papers for 6 scientific instruments onboard Akatsuki (UVI, IR1, IR2, LIR, LAC, and RS). In addition to these, papers based on data analysis (either Akatsuki or else), modeling, and theoretical studies are welcome. The goal of this issue is to become a reference guidebook for Akatsuki data users with good example research papers.

  1. The existence of lightning discharges in the Venus atmosphere has been controversial for more than 30 years, with many positive and negative reports published. The lightning and airglow camera (LAC) onboard th...

    Authors: Yukihiro Takahashi, Mitsuteru Sato, Masataka Imai, Ralph Lorenz, Yoav Yair, Karen Aplin, Georg Fischer, Masato Nakamura, Nobuaki Ishii, Takumi Abe, Takehiko Satoh, Takeshi Imamura, Chikako Hirose, Makoto Suzuki, George L. Hashimoto, Naru Hirata…
    Citation: Earth, Planets and Space 2018 70:88
  2. Since insertion into orbit on December 7, 2015, the Akatsuki orbiter has returned global images of Venus from its four imaging cameras at eleven discrete wavelengths from ultraviolet (283 and 365 nm) and near ...

    Authors: Sanjay S. Limaye, Shigeto Watanabe, Atsushi Yamazaki, Manabu Yamada, Takehiko Satoh, Takao M. Sato, Masato Nakamura, Makoto Taguchi, Tetsuya Fukuhara, Takeshi Imamura, Toru Kouyama, Yeon Joo Lee, Takeshi Horinouchi, Javier Peralta, Naomoto Iwagami, George L. Hashimoto…
    Citation: Earth, Planets and Space 2018 70:24
  3. The ultraviolet imager (UVI) has been developed for the Akatsuki spacecraft (Venus Climate Orbiter mission). The UVI takes ultraviolet (UV) images of the solar radiation reflected by the Venusian clouds with nar...

    Authors: Atsushi Yamazaki, Manabu Yamada, Yeon Joo Lee, Shigeto Watanabe, Takeshi Horinouchi, Shin-ya Murakami, Toru Kouyama, Kazunori Ogohara, Takeshi Imamura, Takao M. Sato, Yukio Yamamoto, Tetsuya Fukuhara, Hiroki Ando, Ko-ichiro Sugiyama, Seiko Takagi, Hiroki Kashimura…
    Citation: Earth, Planets and Space 2018 70:23
  4. Venus is covered with thick clouds. Ultraviolet (UV) images at 0.3–0.4 microns show detailed cloud features at the cloud-top level at about 70 km, which are created by an unknown UV-absorbing substance. Images...

    Authors: Takeshi Horinouchi, Toru Kouyama, Yeon Joo Lee, Shin-ya Murakami, Kazunori Ogohara, Masahiro Takagi, Takeshi Imamura, Kensuke Nakajima, Javier Peralta, Atsushi Yamazaki, Manabu Yamada and Shigeto Watanabe
    Citation: Earth, Planets and Space 2018 70:10
  5. The status and initial products of the 1-μm camera onboard the Akatsuki mission to Venus are presented. After the successful retrial of Venus’ orbit insertion on Dec. 2015 (5 years after the failure in Dec. 20...

    Authors: Naomoto Iwagami, Takeshi Sakanoi, George L. Hashimoto, Kenta Sawai, Shoko Ohtsuki, Seiko Takagi, Kazunori Uemizu, Munetaka Ueno, Shingo Kameda, Shin-ya Murakami, Masato Nakamura, Nobuaki Ishii, Takumi Abe, Takehiko Satoh, Takeshi Imamura, Chikako Hirose…
    Citation: Earth, Planets and Space 2018 70:6
  6. We provide an overview of data products from observations by the Japanese Venus Climate Orbiter, Akatsuki, and describe the definition and content of each data-processing level. Levels 1 and 2 consist of non-c...

    Authors: Kazunori Ogohara, Masahiro Takagi, Shin-ya Murakami, Takeshi Horinouchi, Manabu Yamada, Toru Kouyama, George L. Hashimoto, Takeshi Imamura, Yukio Yamamoto, Hiroki Kashimura, Naru Hirata, Naoki Sato, Atsushi Yamazaki, Takehiko Satoh, Naomoto Iwagami, Makoto Taguchi…
    Citation: Earth, Planets and Space 2017 69:167
  7. The first year (December 2015 to November 2016) of IR2 after Akatsuki’s successful insertion to an elongated elliptical orbit around Venus is reported with performance evaluation and results of data acquisitio...

    Authors: Takehiko Satoh, Takao M. Sato, Masato Nakamura, Yasumasa Kasaba, Munetaka Ueno, Makoto Suzuki, George L. Hashimoto, Takeshi Horinouchi, Takeshi Imamura, Atsushi Yamazaki, Takayuki Enomoto, Yuri Sakurai, Kosuke Takami, Kenta Sawai, Takashi Nakakushi, Takumi Abe…
    Citation: Earth, Planets and Space 2017 69:154
  8. The Venus Climate Orbiter Akatsuki arrived at Venus in December 2015, and the Longwave Infrared Camera (LIR) onboard the spacecraft started making observations. LIR has acquired more than 8000 images during th...

    Authors: Tetsuya Fukuhara, Makoto Taguchi, Takeshi Imamura, Akane Hayashitani, Takeru Yamada, Masahiko Futaguchi, Toru Kouyama, Takao M. Sato, Mao Takamura, Naomoto Iwagami, Masato Nakamura, Makoto Suzuki, Munetaka Ueno, George L. Hashimoto, Mitsuteru Sato, Seiko Takagi…
    Citation: Earth, Planets and Space 2017 69:141
  9. After the arrival of Akatsuki spacecraft of Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency at Venus in December 2015, the radio occultation experiment, termed RS (Radio Science), obtained 19 vertical profiles of the Venus...

    Authors: Takeshi Imamura, Hiroki Ando, Silvia Tellmann, Martin Pätzold, Bernd Häusler, Atsushi Yamazaki, Takao M. Sato, Katsuyuki Noguchi, Yoshifumi Futaana, Janusz Oschlisniok, Sanjay Limaye, R. K. Choudhary, Yasuhiro Murata, Hiroshi Takeuchi, Chikako Hirose, Tsutomu Ichikawa…
    Citation: Earth, Planets and Space 2017 69:137
  10. AKATSUKI is the Japanese Venus Climate Orbiter that was designed to investigate the climate system of Venus. The orbiter was launched on May 21, 2010, and it reached Venus on December 7, 2010. Thrust was appl...

    Authors: Masato Nakamura, Takeshi Imamura, Nobuaki Ishii, Takumi Abe, Yasuhiro Kawakatsu, Chikako Hirose, Takehiko Satoh, Makoto Suzuki, Munetaka Ueno, Atsushi Yamazaki, Naomoto Iwagami, Shigeto Watanabe, Makoto Taguchi, Tetsuya Fukuhara, Yukihiro Takahashi, Manabu Yamada…
    Citation: Earth, Planets and Space 2016 68:75