But the Sky and Telescope website reports that recent science casts doubt on any mechanism that could generate night side light on Venus visible to an observer on Earth. Mariner 10 examined Venus and Mercury Slanger's Keck telescope study indicates that the green airglow emissions caused by atomic oxygen chemistry on the dark side of the planet might be visible to an orbiting astronaut, but is too faint to be visually detected in the types of telescopes employed by Ashen Light observers. This has been interpreted as the result of the lighter form of hydrogen escaping the planet and leaving high accumulations of deuterium. Hydrogen, of course, is one of the main ingredients of water. The other, oxygen, is locked-up in abundance by the planet's dense carbon dioxide atmosphere.
Tremolite is formed by lava and magma in the presence of water.
Detecting tremolite on Venus would indicate a water presence in the planet's past. But researchers at the Planetary Chemistry Laboratory in Earth and Planetary Sciences, at Washington University, decided to determine the decay rate for tremolite, at various temperatures, to understand if it might be worth looking for on the planet. By periodically weighing the samples they document the decay rate for the mineral. Probes using infrared reflectance spectroscopy could be built-today to look for tremolite and related minerals on the Venusian surface.