Venus wind map at cloud top level with the MTR/THEMIS visible spectrometer, I: Instrumental performance and first results

Solar light gets scattered at cloud top level in Venus’ atmosphere, in the visible range, which corresponds to the altitude of 67 km. We present Doppler velocity measurements performed with the high resolution spectrometer MTR of the Solar telescope THEMIS (Teide Observatory, Canary Island) on the sodium D2 solar line ( 5890 A ˚ ) . Observations lasted only 49 min because of cloudy weather. However, we could assess the instrumental velocity sensitivity, 31 m s - 1 per pixel of 1 arcsec, and give a value of the amplitude of zonal wind at equator at 151 ± 16 m s - 1 .