lhs3020b:Here are a couple of the less well-known pieces of astrophotography.These two images were o
lhs3020b:Here are a couple of the less well-known pieces of astrophotography.These two images were originally sent back to Earth from the Soviet Venera program probes (I believe these specific two came from Venera 13, though I don’t have the citation to hand).That’s right - that barren rocky wasteland is Venus.These images are particularly notable because Venus has a surface temperature of over 460 Celsius and a pressure of around 90 bars. That atmosphere is also pure poison. The clouds you can see aren’t water vapour; they’re composed of droplets of sulphuric acid. The ‘air’ itself is 94% carbon dioxide, with most of the rest being nitrogen and a lot of weird nasties.None of the Venera landers remained operational for more than a couple of hours once on Venus’s surface. But frankly, given how unbelievably hostile the surface conditions are there, it’s a miracle they were able to function at all.I remember these photos very well. When I was in 3rd or 4th grade my teacher was teaching us about the planets when she told us that Venus was so inhospitable that no photos of its surfaced were even taken. I then told her that a Russian probe had landed on Venus and took pictures, at which point she said I was lying. A few days later I got a book on Venus from the school library and showed he the pictures. She then took away my recess :’{ -- source link