Think you know Venus? Think again!

I'm curious to know how many people actually know that Russia sent several probes to Venus.

Ten probes from the Venera series successfully landed on Venus and transmitted data from the surface, including the two Vega program and Venera-Halley probes. In addition, thirteen Venera probes successfully transmitted data from the atmosphere of Venus.
Among the other results, probes of the series became the first man-made devices to enter the atmosphere of another planet (Venera 4 on October 18, 1967), to make a soft landing on another planet (Venera 7 on December 15, 1970), to return images from the planetary surface (Venera 9 on June 8, 1975), and to perform high-resolution radar mapping studies of Venus (Venera 15 on June 2, 1983). So, the entire series could be considered as highly successful.
Unfortunately the surface conditions on Venus are extreme, which meant that the probes did not survive more than about an hour.

Venera is the Russian name for Venus.

Recently, (ok 4 years ago) a man named Don Mitchell reprocessed some of the Venera images, such as this image from Venera 13:



So hands up from those who had no idea about the Venera program?

Want to know more? of course you do!

Links:

en.wikipedia.org...
www.space.com...
www.mentallandscape.com...




[edit on 1/5/10 by Chadwickus]

Doesn't everyone know about Venera? We also have really really nice SAR maps of the surface. In fact, a lot of advances in SAR math that we use today were originally derived in order to process radar maps from Magellan.

reply to post by Bedlam


I didn't know. Found this very interesting. Good job OP.

I found the Altimeter map from Venus 15/16 to be pretty cool.
www.mentallandscape.com...
I could see this map being used in a video game,
S&F

Download the image and zoom in on it at random and you will notice a lot of pixilation one place in particular would be the ground to skyline! That really is pixilated almost looks edited.

Could this be equipment problems? Like watching tv and it goofs up, I don’t know but thought I’d share what I found just looking closer at it.

reply to post by Sippy Cup


As per my OP, some of the images have been reprocessed.

Some had data loss as well, such as this one:




As you can see the image has been cleaned up a lot, this is probably why you can see pixelation.

Thanks for clearing up the pixilation issue.
And for the topic actually I was unaware that any photos of other planets had been taken.

I had no clue a probe went to venus.

thanks, OP

Seems the Russians also sent some probes and what not to the moon also, however no ground photos, but check out these items they sent to the surface. These spheres were meant to explode apart leaving the different shapes scattered on the surface. Funny thing is if I found that stuff I would think alien at first. Just something to share here is the image/link






: www.mentallandscape.com...

I had no idea this had taken place, either. Very cool.

Thanks for sharing. I learned something new today.

Saving any image in the jpeg format is going to result in dataloss, it is considered a 'lossy' file format and any further manipulation (even just resizing to post on a forum) and resaving in the jpeg format will result in further data loss.

Further, the compression algorythm employed is going to especially result in 'noise/dataloss' in areas of rapid tonal change, such as a horizon.

I always liked looking at those images from the surface of Venus. The former Soviet Union seemed to have a big interest in Venus through out the 60s, 70s and early 80s. And now that Russia's economy has been getting better after the collapse of the USSR, they are starting to do more scientific missions again. One of those being Venera D

Also, JAXA will be launching a Venus orbiter next month named Akatsuki which will join the ESA's Venus Express which has been there since 2006.

Seems like Venus will be getting a decent amount of attention again.

Originally posted by Sippy Cup
Seems the Russians also sent some probes and what not to the moon also, however no ground photos...

Actually there are surface photos of the Moon from the two Russian rovers. Check out the links of the Lunokhod 1 and 2 panoramas here.

Very cool stuff and I had no idea! Thanks for sharing this it's much appreciated.

reply to post by jra


Well thats great, thanks for sharing, not looking as nice as the venus shots but, I just started looking through them.

Here are some fun facts about Venus. If you want to look into more interesting things about Venus, please visit my Post on "when was Venus first seen". Here are some facts i started my thread with and an awesome photo showing how Venus makes a pentagram:

• Venus is the brightest object in the sky besides the sun and our moon
  
• it is sometimes called Earth's "sister planet" because they are similar in size, gravity, and bulk composition
  
• A younger Venus is believed to have possessed Earth-like oceans
  
• known as the Morning Star and the Evening Star
  
• Venus can be so bright it casts shadows. The Knights Templar / freemasons knew this and built it into the Rosslyn Chapel.
  
• Every 8 years, earth and venus "kiss" each other. This is called conjunctions. If you look at the image below, you can see each kiss plotted out will make a pentagram.
  
• the 584-day average interval between successive close approaches to the Earth is almost exactly equal to five Venusian solar days.
  

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/cbd8957442f95624.gif[/atsimg]

www.abovetopsecret.com...

I have a feeling there is something really big about Venus. Either humans came from Venus or something else. Some other interesting things about Venus:

We all know about the Mayans end of the Calender at 2012, on December 21st. Most people don't know that the calender goes back almost 26,000 years and is split into 5 ages, we are in the last age. Guess what they called the beginning of this last age? "Birth of Venus". They give the date of the "Birth of Venus" in 3114 BC. Another interesting thing is that Newgrange, which was built before Stonehenge and the Pyramids was built to catch the light of Venus. Many other ancient buildings have this in mind too. Guess when Newgrange was built? Around 3200BC, right around the time of the "Birth of Venus", whatever that was...