Above , this artistic illustration depicts the Venusian surface and atmosphere , as well as phosphine molecules . These molecules float in the windblown clouds of Venus at altitudes of 55 to 80km , absorbing some of the millimetre waves that are produced at lower altitudes . They were detected in Venus ’ s high clouds in data from the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter / submillimeter Array , in which ESO is a partner .
round-the-clock temperatures of 900 degrees Fahrenheit . For decades scientists assumed Venus was a sterile hell , and largely ignored it in favor of Mars or several of the water- rich moons of Jupiter and Saturn . But not all scientists . Planetary astronomer David Grinspoon , of the Planetary Science Institute , has persistently championed the idea of paying greater attention to Venus . He ’ s pointed out that at an altitude of 30 miles above the surface , the cloud temperatures drop to roughly the same as a Fall day in New York . The idea that some microbes could be floating in these extraordinarily dense and temperate clouds is not beyond the pale . Such organisms could be the left-overs from simple life that may have been spawned during the billions of years that Venus had oceans , vast seas that eventually boiled away . They would be the
Above , the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope ( JCMT ), situated close to the summit of Maunakea , Hawaii , is the largest telescope in the world specifically designed to observe at submillimetre wavelengths . The telescope is used to study objects ranging from our Solar System and distant galaxies , to interstellar and circumstellar dust and gas .