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.