Global True Color View Of Venus? Options

[elakdawalla]

I'm creating a website with views of the worlds of the solar system, to scale with each other (it'll march up and down the few orders of magnitude necessary), and I am having a terrible time finding a global view of Venus to include in it that fits the criteria I'm trying to apply. To the extent possible, I am searching for:

- Full-disk, global view
- Minimum phase angle available
- Approximate true color, as would be perceived by a human observing the globe from space

For Venus, the only global views I am finding are either based on Magellan data (radar views, nothing like what a human would see) or are colorized ultraviolet views (which greatly overemphasize the visibility of cloud patterns in the Venusian atmosphere). I've seen the lovely partial global view of Venus on Don Mitchell's website -- that's the sort of thing I'm looking for, but I need a full disk. Does anybody have any suggestions? Anybody done any work with Mariner 10 or Galileo data that produces a nice, realistic view?

[Stu]

Wow, there really would be b****r all to see if you went there, wouldn't there? Makes Uranus look positively psychedelic!

[ugordan]

Yep, and every time I see a montage of all solar system planets with Venus depicted by the brown-red Magellan surface globe, I die a little inside...

*cough*Photojournal*cough*

[tedstryk]

Yep, and every time I see a montage of all solar system planets with Venus depicted by the brown-red Magellan surface globe, I die a little inside...

*cough*Photojournal*cough*

The coloration is based on Venera images from the surface, not the cloudtops. Granted, the coloration is due to the filtering of light in the atmosphere, but if we are going to be anal about coloring it like we would see it from space, then the clould should be covering it as well. I will add that the color is still a bit red, mostly owing to the fact that the Venera images have been better calibrated since the Magellan mission ended.

[ngunn]

coloring it like we would see it from space

Late night trivia I know, but I'm anatomical about this too. If the viewpoint is out in space then indeed the image should show what would be visible from there - if the aim of the image is to inform the public directly. Other kinds of image useful for scientific purposes that strip away atmospheres, represent invisible frequencies using visble colours, stretch contrast, or vertical scale, should be accompanied by health warnings if posted on public websites. The latest VIMS paper is exemplary. The images come with an explanation of what the colours stand for in each of the two ways the data are represented. It's clear that they do not mean "this is what it would look like". Making an artificially coloured radar map serve as the 'appearance' of Venus is a travesty. (Don't look too closely, it may also be vertically exaggerated.)