Venera Images, VENERA 13 fully calibrated image Options

[vikingmars]

Here is the Venera 13 fully calibrated image, produced from raw imaging 3-filters data (note the 3 horizons at left well discernible). It was published inside "L'Astronomie Magazine" of Societe Astronomique de France.
Enjoy !

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

Yes, the first shots of Venus from Venera 9 and 10 turned out to be remarkable for their sheer ordinariness. Not only was there no super-refractive "swimming pool effect" (which had recently become a staple of SF stories about the planet; John Varley's first published story used it and was called "In the Bowl"), but even in those grainy photos it was clear that the horizon was fairly sharp and that the shadows even of small pebbles, despite the dense atmosphere, were quite sharp. In fact, the Soviets had equipped the two landers with floodlights on the assumption that the solar illumination might be too dim to see the surface otherwise! The much better photos from Venera 13 and 14, of course, confirmed all this even more dramatically (and also revealed that fiery orange sky, although I don't know whether that color was predicted in advance).

Scientists have, really, a pretty bad track record when it comes to predicting the optical qualities of surface photos. Remember how astonished everyone was when Viking 1's first black-and-white photos showed a light-colored sky (which later turned out to be pink) instead of the deep violet sky everyone had expected? They even predicted that deep violet sky again for Pathfinder, since there was less dust in the air at the time of its landing.