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?

[planet_guy]

well the 16km/pix are using the 'holes' the holes are in the co2 absorption, but you still have the clouds which are responsible for the blurring. of course since it has not been tried before these are only very cautious predictions. it might turn out to be somewhere between 16 and 50km/pixels
regarding the coverage - it will be mainly for the southern hemisphere. everything in the north can be done only by stacking several orbits or (maybe) by trying some slew of the spacecraft. However, surface imaging is not the main task of VEX so this will surely not be done in the beginning of the mission

[tedstryk]

well the 16km/pix are using the 'holes' the holes are in the co2 absorption, but you still have the clouds which are responsible for the blurring. of course since it has not been tried before these are only very cautious predictions. it might turn out to be somewhere between 16 and 50km/pixels
regarding the coverage - it will be mainly for the southern hemisphere. everything in the north can be done only by stacking several orbits or (maybe) by trying some slew of the spacecraft. However, surface imaging is not the main task of VEX so this will surely not be done in the beginning of the mission

Sounds like an extended mission task. 16 km was the resolution/pixel, 50-100 was the estimated realistic resolution, thanks to the atmosphere. I am just hoping that the predictions don't hold up

[JRehling]

Sounds like an extended mission task.  16 km was the resolution/pixel, 50-100 was the estimated realistic resolution, thanks to the atmosphere.  I am just hoping that the predictions don't hold up 

I'm worried more about the spectral resolution -- All the Galileo image really shows is that areas of higher altitude are cooler, and if all we get out of this is thermal information at >10 km resolution, it'll be of very little interest.

Even with excellent data, spectral resolution has a tough time converting into mineralogy (note TES @ Mars, and the very vague assessments of the non icy compositions of the Galileans). In the case of Venus, we'll have so much spectral interference from numerous species (some unknown!) not to mention thermal noise, really the best I hope for is that we get a good cumulative, length-of-mission differentiation between planitia, tessera, fresh lava flows, and the radar-bright areas at high altitudes. Anything evidentiary about mineralogy between those four unit types would be great, and the recognition of any units that show up in IR but not in radar would be a godsend.

As far as eye candy goes, the best we could dream of would be to get low res data that could be used to "color" the radar maps illustratively or realistically.

One good subcloud aerobot with a camera would take a much better whack at this, with an easy time of making visible light spectra on the surface unit level, if not decameter level. Hopefully soon...