High altitude Venus haze from Pioneer Venus limb scans

High vertical resolution scans of the Venus limb made by the Pioneer Venus Orbiter Cloud Photopolarimeter at 365 nm and 690 nm wavelengths are used to investigate the level of the haze top, and haze particle properties and scale height. Haze particle vertical optical depth 0.01 occurs at altitude 80 to 85 km based on knowledge of instrument pointing. The lowest haze tops were observed close to subsolar longitudes but the data set supports a longitude dependence no more than a temporal variation. Single scattering computations for a spherical shell atmosphere show good agreement with observed intensities for particles smaller than 0.3 μm radius and refractive index less than 1.7, consistent with, but not limited to, concentrated sulfuric acid. Particle scale height in the 0.5 to 2 mbar pressure regions varies between 1 and 3 km over the season (12 of 92 days), latitude (15–45°N), and local time (0900–1800) ranges of the observations. Detached layers of haze are sometimes present. An average particle scale height of 2.2 km at 84 km altitude yields an eddy diffusion coefficient of 1.3 × 10⁵ cm² sec^?1.