A study of Venus rotation at short time scale

Venus which can be considered as the twin sister of the Earth in view of its global characteristics (size, density) has been the subject of many investigations to understand its slow retrograde rotation (243d) and its rather small obliquity (2°.63). Many of these studies concern the evolution of Venus rotation at very long time scales. Here we present a complete model of Venus precession and nutation based on Hamiltonian formalism for short times scales. We apply a theoretical framework already used by Kinoshita (1977) for the rigid Earth. After calculating the effects due to the gravitational tide exerted by the Sun, we also evaluate the indirect planetary effects due to the perturbation of the planets. We compare our results with those obtained by Souchay et al. (1999) on the Earth. At last we present the prospect for future studies among which are the polhody, the effects of the atmosphere and of the core-mantle interaction.