Venus nightside ionospheric holes

Pioneer Venus Orbiter (PVO) measured the ionosphere and atmosphere of Venus for 13 years 10 months yielding a rich data set of archived data from a complement of instruments. One particularly striking feature seen was the occurrence of deep localized nightside ionization depletions commonly called holes. A number of theories have been put forth to explain their observed characteristics, but there is still no consensus on their source. A possibly related phenomenon in the Venus nightside ionosphere is the occurrence of disappearing or severely disturbed ionospheres characterized by deep, widespread plasma depletions in almost the entire nightside. This paper reexamines the holes and disappearing ionospheres and other characteristics of the nightside ionosphere during solar maximum using a more extensive database than earlier studies. The hole locations, occurrences, and dependencies on solar wind dynamic pressure (Psw) are analyzed, and a comparison is made with earlier studies. It is shown that there is no Psw threshold for holes to occur and at Psw values greater than similar to 9 nPa, hole occurrence decreases while the occurrence of severely disturbed orbits increases, suggesting that holes may evolve into severely disturbed orbits. Other characteristics of the nightside are shown to be influenced by solar wind pressure to varying degrees; for example, the density integrated along the orbit path below the ionopause, and the median density at low altitudes exhibit strong inverse correlation with Psw, while the peak density is nearly independent of Psw.