Venus Science Options

[ljk4-1]

Sunspot, NM (Feb. 7, 2006) -- The planet Venus is best known for the thick layers of clouds that veil its surface from view by telescopes on Earth. But the veil has holes, and a New Mexico State University scientist plans on using a solar telescope to peer through them to study the weather on Venus.

"Observations of Venus from a nighttime telescope at a single location are very difficult because Venus is so close to the Sun in the sky," said Dr. Nancy Chanover, a planetary scientist at NMSU in Las Cruces, NM. "You can observe it for about two hours at most." Then the Sun rises and blinds the telescope (or Venus sets, depending on the time of year).

http://www.nso.edu/press/venus06/

[Phil Stooke]

Ted said "My guess is that since Venus was featureless from Earth, they reasoned that, given the crude electronic imaging of the 1960s, the images would be embarassingly blank."

I think he's right. Also, there was still in those days a strong bias against imaging from the 'sky scientists' (see Don Wilhelms' great book 'To a Rocky Moon'). Why transmit a million bytes for one fuzzy image when a thousand measurements of the magnetic field, plasma and particles would tell you so much more? People had to fight to fly cameras. That seems strange to us now, but we are talking about a period when the value of images for geological study had not been fully demonstrated - Shoemaker and others at USGS were doing it, but the work was still not fully accepted outside their group.

Phil

[tedstryk]

Ted said "My guess is that since Venus was featureless from Earth, they reasoned that, given the crude electronic imaging of the 1960s, the images would be embarassingly blank."

I think he's right.  Also, there was still in those days a strong bias against imaging from the 'sky scientists' (see Don Wilhelms' great book 'To a Rocky Moon').  Why transmit a million bytes for one fuzzy image when a thousand measurements of the magnetic field, plasma and particles would tell you so much more?  People had to fight to fly cameras.  That seems strange to us now, but we are talking about a period when the value of images for geological study had not been fully demonstrated - Shoemaker and others at USGS were doing it, but the work was still not fully accepted outside their group.

Phil

On the scientist end, this is definitely a factor. With moon and Mars missions, such as Luna-3 and Mariner-4, the propaganda factor of having images no doubt tilted the tables, but for Venus, the prospect of images that wouldn't be cause for bragging rights allowed the "sky scientist" faction to dominate.