If you’ve ever wanted to see what it’s like to buzz Venus like only a spacecraft can, here’s your chance: this is a video animation of images taken by ESA’s Venus Express as it makes a pole-to-pole orbit of our neighboring world.
Captured in ultraviolet wavelengths, the images were acquired by the spacecraft’s Venus Monitoring Camera last January over a period of 18 hours. It’s truly a “day in the life” of Venus Express!
From ESA’s description of the video:
We join the spacecraft from a staggering 66,000 km above the south pole, staring down into the swirling south polar vortex. From this bird’s-eye view, half of the planet is in darkness, the ‘terminator’ marking the dividing line between the day and night sides of the planet.
Intricate features on smaller and smaller scales are revealed as Venus Express dives to just 250 km above the north pole and clouds flood the field of view, before regaining a global perspective as it climbs away from the north pole.
The observed pattern of bright and dark markings is caused by variations in an unknown absorbing chemical at the Venus cloud tops.
Read more: Are Venus’ Volcanoes Still Active?
False-color image of cloud features on Venus. Captured by Venus Express from a distance of 30,000 km (18,640 miles) on December 8, 2011. (ESA/MPS/DLR/IDA)
Source: European Space Agency
WEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!
Interesting perspective from robot’s passage of Earth’s dark sister. Better, I think, if film had been slowed down a bit. The journey past the sulfuric veils of Hell, was a little to fast for my slow brain to compute.
You could almost feel the blast, from cloud-tops’ burning wind; the shrouded inferno flying past, howling over Terra’s terrible twin. In dissolving wake of its heat, ah, the cold of space is a welcome treat!