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Unmanned Spaceflight.com _ Venus Express _ Venus Express and MESSENGER simultaneous observations

Posted by: elakdawalla Jul 13 2007, 04:32 PM

I thought this deserved its own topic...ESA just posted some images and a story on observations taken during the MESSENGER flyby. I assume we'll see a NASA / APL post later on the same topic.

http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMVN4HYX3F_index_0.html

Some interesting images here; I was quite surprised by the excellent match between the VIRTIS thermal image and the Magellan radar image. Looks like they're zeroing in on how to process those surface images!

--Emily

Posted by: remcook Jul 13 2007, 04:39 PM

The surface stuff is pretty cool. There's one from Artemis Corona too, which I hope they will show soon.

Posted by: elakdawalla Jul 13 2007, 04:48 PM

I just consulted my solar system atlas...one of the cartographers please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that the topography we're looking at in that image is in eastern Aphrodite, including parts of Diana and Dali Chasmae?

--Emily

Posted by: remcook Jul 13 2007, 05:44 PM

I thought you were an expert in venus geology
yup, it seems to be around atahensik corona

http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/images/v37_comp.pdf

edit - oh by the way, I think these surface images are hardly processed at all! These regions are just regions with high altitude (thus radiance) contrast. It's pretty amazing really that you can see these things in the raw images.

Posted by: ynyralmaen Jul 13 2007, 07:02 PM

Wouldn't they get a better match with the VIRTIS data if the scaling of the Magellan altimetry data was inverted http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMVN4HYX3F_index_1.html#subhead5? Looks like the bright areas in one are dark in the other, and vice-versa, or am I wrong?

Low-res shaded relief of the same Magellan altimetry (rather than SAR) data here:
http://www.solarviews.com/raw/venus/topoven2.jpg

Posted by: remcook Jul 18 2007, 10:00 AM

Did the release got pulled/postponed?

Posted by: TheChemist Jul 18 2007, 10:32 AM

Strange ...
It comes up for a sec with Firefox (without any clickable links on it), and then I get redirected to the main VE page.

Posted by: ynyralmaen Jul 18 2007, 11:37 AM

Yes, very odd. The page of images and captions accompanying the article is still online though, http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMVN4HYX3F_index_1.html.

Posted by: cndwrld Jul 18 2007, 03:39 PM

The Messenger Fly-By page got yanked from the ESA web site. The ESA people were ready to go, thought they had NASA/APL agreement, and posted it. But NASA/APL weren't ready yet, so it had to be pulled down again. Should be back up as soon as both sides of the Atlantic get their ducks in a row. I guess one location didn't get pulled down yet, though.