Messenger Venus flyby images Options

[Gladstoner]

Regarding the few images released after the 6/5/2007 Messenger flyby of Venus:

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA10124

The image caption states that 614 images were acquired. Are these available?

After all these missions, there is still a lack of (available) visible-light (non-UV) images of the 2nd rock.

[elakdawalla]

That version did not correct for the nonsquareness of the pixels, so looks oval (and yellow). I like this version of the Mariner 10 global by Mattias Malmer. Also, here is a color (yes, color) view of Venus from the MESSENGER flyby data, processed by Gordan Ugarkovic.

[Gladstoner]

Thanks everyone for the images and links. But this:

Also, here is a color (yes, color) view of Venus from the MESSENGER flyby data, processed by Gordan Ugarkovic.

is a gorgeous view of the planet. This isn't merely one of the many false-colored treatments and renderings I've seen throughout my life. This looks as if one is seeing Venus in person through a porthole in all its blank, yet spectacular and real glory. The understated appearance makes the planet even more mysterious and foreboding.

Too bad the globe doesn't fit within the frame. I may try to reconstruct the missing parts in a photo editor.

[JRehling]

Here's my best image of Venus, taken with a Celestron 6se last month:

Amateurs have turned up some very impressive results in UV and IR, but in visible light, there's not much difference between so-so, pretty good, and the best efforts.

I've played around with projecting this into a map, then projecting the map back into a sphere to create a full Venus image, but one has to make a good model with Hapke parameters to do that right. And then, you could get a nice full Venus image. Which, to spoil the surprise, is going to be a white circle. You may as well take a Voyager image of Uranus and desaturate the color away and you'll get almost the same result.

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