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?

[t_oner]

It is unbelievable that Venus is the nearest planet and we still don't have a single global true color image of it. Galileo could have done it but did not, I don't know if Cassini could do it because of technical issues. It may or not have a scientific value but it should be done. I hope Venus Express has a suitable camera and filters for this job. (Pluto not yet explored, Venus not yet explored in true color).

[JRehling]

It is unbelievable that Venus is the nearest planet and we still don't have a single global true color image of it. Galileo could have done it but did not, I don't know if Cassini could do it because of technical issues. It may or not have a scientific value but it should be done. I hope Venus Express has a suitable camera and filters for this job. (Pluto not yet explored, Venus not yet explored in true color).

We don't have many great pictures of the far side of the Moon in true color, and not very many near-full phase pictures of the Earth in true color!

As I mentioned earlier, there are some pretty good pictures of Venus taken from Earth, in which case, it is never a full Venus, but at least we can start to imagine the real deal!

FWIW, Mercury is the third-nearest planet, and the impoverishment of good imagery there in anything approximating true color is astonishing. Even FROM Earth!

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

There is a spectral albedo for Venus. That can be turned into XYZ, via the CIE tables. Then convert that into Standard RGB ("sRGB"), which is a set of phosphor chromas that the computer industry and the HDTV people all more or less agree on. It has a gamma of 2.2.

Here's a set of planet colors, with brightnesses proportional to the total albedo:Planetary Palette