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vikingmars
biggrin.gif 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 !
Decepticon
Wow! Nice work.
um3k
Very nice!
hal_9000
WoW!
gpurcell
QUOTE (vikingmars @ Sep 14 2005, 09:26 PM)
biggrin.gif 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 !
*



Very, very nice!
tedstryk
QUOTE (vikingmars @ Sep 14 2005, 09:26 PM)
biggrin.gif 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 !
*


I am skeptical about that being a three image mosaic. I think that it is a three image mosaic merged with the clear channel scan. The color data simply isn't that good (The fact that the data is from Brown leads me to assume that it is the same set I use, because that is where I got mine). . Also, the color imagery doesn't extend out that far. Here is the best that can be produced with three frames.

The holes in the red image and some of the holes in the green image could be filled form two other images. It is also either scaled up or super-resolution - this is far bigger than the original image. I made a similar attempt and came up with this.




That said, it is an excellent image. I am assuming that whoever made this used the whole data set for a super-resolution product and produced color with the available images in each band.
vikingmars
smile.gif Dear Tedstryk,
Yes, indeed, I had to reconstruct some missing data from different channels and adjust them for their wavelenghts, before integrating them to make the full final RGB color image. Also, the final product is somewat blowed-up because I had to make those fill-ins on a very precise up-to-the-pixel basis !
tedstryk
QUOTE (vikingmars @ Sep 15 2005, 07:18 AM)
smile.gif Dear Tedstryk,
Yes, indeed, I had to reconstruct some missing data from different channels and adjust them for their wavelenghts, before integrating them to make the full final RGB color image. Also, the final product is somewat blowed-up because I had to make those fill-ins on a very precise up-to-the-pixel basis !
*


Great work!
tedstryk
I have updated one of my mosaics from Venera 13. I have tried to do gap fill by guessing how features might continue from one side to the other.

Decepticon
Now thats cool!
GregM
.
Decepticon
tedstryk I was wondering if you have ever edited the image so it would look as if I was standing on Venus?

I once saw a image like it in astronomy magazine but it was small.
tedstryk
QUOTE (Decepticon @ Sep 24 2005, 05:05 AM)
tedstryk I was wondering if you have ever edited the image so it would look as if I was standing on Venus?

I once saw a image like it in astronomy magazine but it was small.
*



Other than these, I have found that frustrating. In addition to the wierd projection in terms of its shape, the fact that the camera turned so much as it scanned creat the appearance of everything being right in front of you. I remember an issue of Astronomy with some Venera images back in the late 1980s, but I think it was just the Venera 14 camera 1 picture that they showed.
Bob Shaw
QUOTE (tedstryk @ Sep 24 2005, 01:33 PM)
Other than  these, I have found that frustrating.  In addition to the wierd projection in terms of its shape, the fact that the camera turned so much as it scanned creat the appearance of everything being right in front of you.  I remember an issue of Astronomy with some Venera images back in the late 1980s, but I think it was just the Venera 14 camera 1 picture that they showed.
*


The Soviets were very keen on 'epiphotography' - images made with a rotating turret and a slit rather than a traditional 'eye' design. They famously marketed the Horizont 35mm camera in the West which worked in this way, and is now a collectors item - it moved not only the optical barrel but the film as well, and you ended up with (I think) a 2X normal length negative. The geometry of such images - like those from the Viking Landers - is strange. All the data is there, but it all looks somehow *wrong*, as the perspective doesn't do what you expect. Such cameras were once very popular for school photographs, and produced a very high quality and long format print. Their mechanisms were sometimes slow enough for kids to race away behind the camera, come in from the other side, and be photographed twice!
dvandorn
QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Sep 24 2005, 09:48 AM)
...Such cameras were once very popular for school photographs, and produced a very high quality and long format print. Their mechanisms were sometimes slow enough for kids to race away behind the camera, come in from the other side, and be photographed twice!
*

As you could with the Viking cameras. There is an official Viking Imaging Team portrait out there somewhere, taken with one of the Viking cameras. At least one person appears in the picture three times. Several others appear in it twice.

-the other Doug
djellison
QUOTE (dvandorn @ Sep 24 2005, 04:02 PM)
There is an official Viking Imaging Team portrait out there somewhere, taken with one of the Viking cameras.  At least one person appears in the picture three times.  Several others appear in it twice.

-the other Doug
*


http://history.nasa.gov/SP-425/ch8.htm


I've seen a larger version, and I think that actually, the guy who's on the bottom row - is on the image about 6 times

Doug
JRehling
QUOTE (Decepticon @ Sep 23 2005, 10:05 PM)
tedstryk I was wondering if you have ever edited the image so it would look as if I was standing on Venus?

I once saw a image like it in astronomy magazine but it was small.
*


The net sum image data taken by a Venera camera would be properly compiled into a cup shape that shows you the horizon on the ends, and does *not* show you the horizon in the middle, but instead shows you the extreme foreground in the middle. Don Davis's sketch shows that cup shape in a grid across the middle of this image:

http://www.donaldedavis.com/2004%20new/VENERGRD.jpg

If the probes all landed straight up, it would be possible to neatly project their images into that cup shape, but if you try, you get results that are a bit off due to the tilt of the landers. I have played with these images to get acceptible looking cups, which I have stored on another computer than the one I'm using now. I frankly find them frustrating because the "best part", the middle horizon, is absent.

Venera 13 and 14 had two cameras facing opposite directions, and Ted's work shows the bits of horizon that are almost-contiguously captured by the side portions of the images.

There's really no better you can do with the raw data.

My attempt to use Venera images to give you the feeling of standing on Venus, I linked to here:

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...topic=909&st=75

As I said there, three of these images are 100% Venera brightness data, but I cloned and rearranged portions of the images so that any patch in my image is actual image data from that lander, true to the Y dimension, but slid around in the X to create a rectangular panorama with no gaps and pretty true to real Venus "stuff". The coloring is mainly fictional. The upper right image shows half of the Venera 10 "cup", which gives you an idea of what the whole set of 6 cups (1 each from Venera 9 and 10, 2 from Venera 13 and 14) would look like.

An all-real, non-fragmented panorama of Venus showing more than a bit of the horizon is simply impossible with Venera data. ESA hasn't said much about a Venus lander, so we'll probably see a first real panorama of Venus when the New Frontiers mission to Venus gets picked, which will either be fourth or fifth in that sequence of five (counting New Horizons as #1). That might happen around 2018-2025. A Discovery-class selection could perform that investigation (and others of great interest) but will likely not happen, IMO.
Bob Shaw
QUOTE (djellison @ Sep 24 2005, 05:05 PM)
I've seen a larger version, and I think that actually, the guy who's on the bottom row - is on the image about 6 times

Doug
*



Doug:

Exactly!

And, if the image had been created in a setting other than that of a desert (ie with straight lines, buildings etc included) then you'd see the funny perspective, too...

Bob Shaw
vikingmars
smile.gif Looking again closely at the Venera 13 camera 1 raw data, I made an small interesting (discovery : the lander has moved slightly between the 2nd and 3rd clear pans. So I did a quick pixel overlap between the 2nd and 5th clear pans to gain higher resolution.
Here it is (at right, compared to a "regular" image).
Unfortunately, this is the only segment available with no noise. To build an entire hi-res panoramic picture with no noise, I would need to fill in the gaps of the 2nd pan, with data from 3rd to 5th clear pan, thus useless to make hi-res !

...And see the prominent hill at the horizon !

biggrin.gif Enjoy the two pictures : (i) comparison and (ii) perspective oriented 45° to simulate what you would see if you were on Venus !
vikingmars
biggrin.gif ...and I forgot to show you how the camera 1 pan looks like with all bad vertical noise removed by filling all the gaps !
Here it is (still as a raw version). Enjoy !
ljk4-1
QUOTE (vikingmars @ Oct 4 2005, 03:00 PM)
smile.gif Looking again closely at the Venera 13 camera 1 raw data, I made an small interesting (discovery : the lander has moved slightly between the 2nd and 3rd clear pans. So I did a quick pixel overlap between the 2nd and 5th clear pans to gain higher resolution.
Here it is (at right, compared to a "regular" image).
Unfortunately, this is the only segment available with no noise. To build an entire hi-res panoramic picture with no noise, I would need to fill in the gaps of the 2nd pan, with data from 3rd to 5th clear pan, thus useless to make hi-res !

...And see the prominent hill at the horizon !

biggrin.gif Enjoy the two pictures : (i) comparison and (ii) perspective oriented 45° to simulate what you would see if you were on Venus !
*


Venera 13 transmitted data from the planet's surface for 2 hours and 7 minutes, the longest of any lander there. And of all the landers that contained seismometers, only one detected what may have been a very faint and distant quake.

So this begs the question: If the lander movement was real, was it due to a surface movement, was it slipping off one of the rocks, perhaps because it was on a small hill or an angled rock - or was it pushed? cool.gif
vikingmars
smile.gif Well ljk4-1... I don't know about the "Venusquake", but the lander movement is real.
See it herewith enlarged 400% (a shift of 2 pixels vertically between Clear pan 2 and Clear pan 5).
tedstryk
QUOTE (vikingmars @ Oct 4 2005, 08:50 PM)
smile.gif Well ljk4-1... I don't know about the "Venusquake", but the lander movement is real.
See it herewith enlarged 400% (a shift of 2 pixels vertically between Clear pan 2 and Clear pan 5).
*


I can't tell if the lander has moved of the scanning mechanism has shifted. Don Mitchell suggested that there would be some shifting due to the expansion of spacecraft materials in the Venusian heat.
ljk4-1
QUOTE (vikingmars @ Oct 4 2005, 03:50 PM)
smile.gif Well ljk4-1... I don't know about the "Venusquake", but the lander movement is real.
See it herewith enlarged 400% (a shift of 2 pixels vertically between Clear pan 2 and Clear pan 5).
*


I am not questioning the veracity of the movement, but I do have these two questions:

1. What made Venera 13 move, especially in such a short time period?

2. Why hasn't this movement ever been brought to attention or noticed before? Or did I just miss something in the literature?

Always a treat to find something new, even in images over two decades old - which reminds me to say, it's about time we put some more landers on Venus!
tedstryk
QUOTE (ljk4-1 @ Oct 4 2005, 09:03 PM)
I am not questioning the veracity of the movement, but I do have these two questions:

1.  What made Venera 13 move, especially in such a short time period?

2.  Why hasn't this movement ever been brought to attention or noticed before?  Or did I just miss something in the literature?

Always a treat to find something new, even in images over two decades old - which reminds me to say, it's about time we put some more landers on Venus!
*



It also may have shifted as it settled after landing. I don't think expansion and a slight change in the track of the scanning photometer can be ruled out.
JRehling
QUOTE (tedstryk @ Oct 4 2005, 03:21 PM)
It also may have shifted as it settled after landing. I don't think expansion and a slight change in the track of the scanning photometer can be ruled out.
*


My bet is that something inside the spacecraft changed. Also, can we exclude the possibility of a 2-pixel shift due to some un-venus-related processing? I can think of scads of ways that postprocessing would lead to such a shift.

If something did take place on Venus, note that these landers were very heavy, and moreover, in comparison to the local environment, also very cold -- they may have caused some contraction of materials in immediate contact with them.
Bob Shaw
QUOTE (vikingmars @ Oct 4 2005, 09:00 PM)
And see the prominent hill at the horizon !

*


That's just the rim of Gusev...
Bob Shaw
QUOTE (JRehling @ Oct 4 2005, 11:41 PM)
My bet is that something inside the spacecraft changed.
*


Well, the scanning mechanism moved, the filters moved, the whole shooting match heated up... ...it's surely a tribute to the engineers that so few critical dimensions altered!
RNeuhaus
QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Oct 4 2005, 05:53 PM)
Well, the scanning mechanism moved, the filters moved, the whole shooting match heated up... ...it's surely a tribute to the engineers that so few critical dimensions altered!
*

The Venus's temperature is like to the kitchen oven. I am afraid that the Venera spaceship might still be in good shape....if it is made of kitchen oven's technology...

Rodolfo
JRehling
QUOTE (RNeuhaus @ Oct 5 2005, 09:04 AM)
The Venus's temperature is like to the kitchen oven. I am afraid that the Venera spaceship might still be in good shape....if it is made of kitchen oven's technology...

Rodolfo
*


Well, it's quite a bit hotter than my kitchen's oven, but if the construction is mainly steel, or even aluminum, then all of the Veneras should externally look largely or even perfectly intact today, but many of the innards surely were sensitive to high temperatures. The idea was that thermal inertia would give the craft a time to work on the surface, until the first critical component failed. After that, other harm may have come as well. I suspect any earthly wiring insulation would drip away in venusian heat, although I don't know if the Soviets used a superior brand for Venera or if they merely calculated that something else would fail sooner.

It is enlightening to consider that many materials (sufficient even for some science instruments) can easily be made to withstand long stays in venusian heat. The problem is that electronics developed for that purpose do not exist, so the choice is either to expect short survival time, use a nuclear reactor to run a refrigeration system, invent the high-temperature electronics a craft would need -- or some combination of those three.
ilbasso
Wasn't there also the thought that there is sulfuric acid rain on Venus? What would that do to a spaceship that was sitting there for a couple of months?
RNeuhaus
How does the Venus has some kind of rain when the inside temperature is so hot that evaporates everything? There is nothing that can cool the atmosphere to make some rain?

Rodolfo
tedstryk
QUOTE (RNeuhaus @ Oct 5 2005, 09:11 PM)
How does the Venus has some kind of rain when the inside temperature is so hot that evaporates everything? There is nothing that can cool the atmosphere to make some rain?

Rodolfo
*



There is no sulfuric acid rain on the surface of Venus. There has been speculation that it exists in the upper levels of the atmosphere. But in none of those models does it come anywhere near the surface before evaporating.
helvick
QUOTE (tedstryk @ Oct 5 2005, 10:13 PM)
There is no sulfuric acid rain on the surface of Venus.  There has been speculation that it exists in the upper levels of the atmosphere.  But in none of those models does it come anywhere near the surface before evaporating.
*


And possiblyLead and Bismuth Sulphide snow on the mountain tops.

Ah yes - the ultimate in extreme skiing - hanging about on the top of Maxwell Montes, waiting for a fresh fall of galena powder on the southern piste. Peachy.
vikingmars
(following item #19)
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...indpost&p=22733

smile.gif ...So, after verifying that there is also a 2-pixel shift visible on Venera 13 camera #2 images (between clear pans 1 and 2), I decided to apply my techniques building an hi-res Venera 13 color image from the data available.

I then built 2 different pancromatic pans : the 1st one from clear pan 1 (filling the gaps with green pan 1 and red 1 pan) and the 2nd one from clear pan 2 (filling the gaps with green pan 2 and red pan 2). Then I pixel-overlapped them to build an hi-res pancromatic pan. This one was then fused with the colors of the low-res picture (shown on item #1 : http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...dpost&p=20445);

Here is the result : a gain of a 1.3-1.5 resolution over my previous color version.
I think it shows the maximum of details I can retrieve now from the V13 data.
Enjoy !
RNeuhaus
QUOTE (vikingmars @ Oct 8 2005, 12:08 PM)
Bob Shaw
Lovely image!

Bob Shaw
ilbasso
Absolutely breathtaking! I'm amazed at the caliber of science that is represented on this site. You are all doing a tremendous service to all mankind by transcending international borders in your work. I'm honored and thrilled to be part of this forum!
BruceMoomaw
QUOTE (tedstryk @ Oct 5 2005, 09:13 PM)
There is no sulfuric acid rain on the surface of Venus.  There has been speculation that it exists in the upper levels of the atmosphere.  But in none of those models does it come anywhere near the surface before evaporating.
*


It's more than "speculation"; it's been known fact for three decades. Venus' clouds are a mist of sulfuric acid, produced by the fact that the traces of sulfur dioxide dumped into its air by its still-actve volcanoes rise high into the atmosphere and are converted by solar UV into sulfur trioxide, which in turn reacts very readily with the remaining tracres of water vapor to form an H2SO4 cloud layer at the 64 to 46 km level. (This is the same process that created such large amounts of H2SO4 on early Mars, which as we now know has had a radical effect on its surface mineralogy.)

But:

(1) As one might expect, given the tiny trace amounts of the gases out of which they form, Venus' clouds are actually very rarified -- you could see through them for kilometers with little blurring. They are opaque to visible light as seen from above (or below) simply because the layer is so spatially thick (as is also the case with Titan's organic smog).

(2) Pioneer 13's biggest entry probe carried a cloud particle-size spectrometer which worked fine -- but detected not a single, solitary particle in Venus' air from 30 km altitude down to the surface.

(3) There are obviously other substances mixed in with the H2SO4 in Venus' clouds, whose identifies we do not know well, and which are subjects of major scientific interest. In particular, there's the stuff that makes so many regions of Venus' clouds look dark in UV photos -- we actually still do not know what this UV absorber is, although the favored theories revolve around its being one of several sulfur compounds. Then there's the possible detection by several of the Soviet landers of small amounts of other elements (Cl, P, and I think Fe) in the clouds, although given the accuracy of Soviet science instruments this is open to question. Finally, that same cloud particle-size spectrometer on Pioneer 13 located what seems to be a small separate population of cloud particles which are considerably larger than the other liquid acid droplets -- and may possibly be nonspherical solid crystals of something.
RNeuhaus
I have found useful information about the Venera's design spacecraft. Visit Venera's URL

Rodolfo
vikingmars
(Thanks to all for your great contributions about atmospheric science !)

...and (following post 35), I decided to make an acknowledgement to the fantastic art work of Don Davis, by quickly correcting the perspective of the Venera 13 panorama, following his "Venera Grid" made in 1987.
Here is the Venera 13 "Daviscape" !
biggrin.gif Enjoy !
tedstryk
Here is an attempt to do similar processing with a Venera 14 scan. This image has much poorer quality raw data, but, visually, it is my favorite of the Venera shots.



And here is a version with the spacecraft removed from the forground using cloning.

PhilCo126
Superb work on those 1982 Venera color panoramas!

Also great to see that Viking ITEK camera image again. When You look carefully You can see the late Dr Carl Sagan twice in that photo and Dr Thomas Mutch five times kneeling in front of the group ... ohmy.gif
tedstryk
QUOTE (PhilCo126 @ Jan 8 2006, 04:02 PM)
Superb work on those 1982 Venera color panoramas!

Also great to see that Viking ITEK camera image again. When You look carefully You can see the late Dr Carl Sagan twice in that photo and Dr Thomas Mutch five times kneeling in front of the group ...  ohmy.gif
*


Thanks, but actually, I posted the wrong images. These are much better...



RNeuhaus
Very different type of terrain. Mainly rocky, no sand or silica dust. No water erosion signs. Interesting.

Rodolfo
JRehling
QUOTE (RNeuhaus @ Jan 9 2006, 07:08 AM)
Very different type of terrain. Mainly rocky, no sand or silica dust. No water erosion signs. Interesting.

Rodolfo
*


While these new presentations are aesthetically wonderful, the old, unnatural-looking presentations of Venera imagery allowed this level of observation, so they are not new to us. The four sites are quite different, with boulders atop/embedded in soil at two sites and large, plate sheets of rock at the other two. It is certainly the case that water erosion could not have acted on any portion of Venus's surface since the last major resurfacing event (if ever) -- if there are any ancient surfaces that show past water influence of any kind, we will have to hunt them down very carefully. Such formations may not exist at all.

There is sand/pebble soil visible in Venera 9 and Venera 13 surface views. Fine dust may be rare. It seems likely that chemical production of dust is not a major phenomenon, and mechanical processes that produce dust seem to be rare also. Because the surface temperature is very constant, there are only light winds, so dust will not beget new dust much.
tedstryk
QUOTE (JRehling @ Jan 9 2006, 08:29 PM)
While these new presentations are aesthetically wonderful, the old, unnatural-looking presentations of Venera imagery allowed this level of observation, so they are not new to us. The four sites are quite different, with boulders atop/embedded in soil at two sites and large, plate sheets of rock at the other two. It is certainly the case that water erosion could not have acted on any portion of Venus's surface since the last major resurfacing event (if ever) -- if there are any ancient surfaces that show past water influence of any kind, we will have to hunt them down very carefully. Such formations may not exist at all.

There is sand/pebble soil visible in Venera 9 and Venera 13 surface views. Fine dust may be rare. It seems likely that chemical production of dust is not a major phenomenon, and mechanical processes that produce dust seem to be rare also. Because the surface temperature is very constant, there are only light winds, so dust will not beget new dust much.
*


I have always thought the Venera 9 site looks like a Viking landing site.
RNeuhaus
I think that the dust is the product of desintegration of rocks due to some kind of erosion of wind, water, or land along with the temperature changes, or chemical reaction. May be due to the radioactive decay of minerals that desintegrate the rocks into the dust.

So, Venus has "no water", on the surface has very low wind speed and very low temperature changes (I doubt it, since Venus has night that I don't know how much is the temperature drop between the day (470 Centigrade) and night ??. The rest venusian dust might be due to the chemical reaction or radioactive decay of some rocks?

Rodolfo
JRehling
QUOTE (RNeuhaus @ Jan 9 2006, 01:22 PM)
So, Venus has "no water", on the surface has very low wind speed and very low temperature changes (I doubt it, since Venus has night that I don't know how much is the temperature drop between the day (470 Centigrade) and night ??. 
*


I'm curious -- if you don't know how much the temperature drop is between night and day on Venus, but you are interested enough to discuss the matter, why don't you look it up on the Internet before posting?

It seems odd to me that a poster perceiving himself to lack information would have a greater motivation to analyze a phenomenon (and post the un-informed analysis) than to get basic information about the phenomenon. The information is not hard to come by, and un-informed analysis is all too easy to come by! wink.gif

Put another way: If you have ten units of personal energy, which do you think helps the board more: five researched topics and five informed posts, or ten uninformed posts?
Bob Shaw
QUOTE (tedstryk @ Jan 9 2006, 09:34 PM)
I have always thought the Venera 9 site looks like a Viking landing site.
*


Or even the latest Meridiani images!

Bob Shaw
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