The Flickr Unmannedinterplanetaryspacecraft Image Generatr

“In this false color image of Neptune, objects that are deep in the atmosphere are blue, while those at higher altitudes are white. The image was taken by Voyager 2's wide-angle camera through an orange filter and two different methane filters. Light at methane wavelengths is mostly absorbed in the deeper atmosphere. The bright, white feature is a high altitude cloud just south of the Great Dark Spot. The hard, sharp inner boundary within the bright cloud is an artifact of computer processing on Earth. Other, smaller clouds associated with the Great Dark Spot are white or pink, and are also at high altitudes. Neptune's limb looks reddish because Voyager 2 is viewing it tangentially, and the sunlight is scattered back to space before it can be absorbed by the methane. A long, narrow band of high altitude clouds near the top of the image is located at 25 degrees north latitude, and faint hazes mark the equator and polar regions. The Voyager Mission is conducted by JPL for NASA's Office of Space Science and Applications.”

Above, and the image, at:

photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00051
Credit: JPL Photojournal website

I wonder if - under higher resolution - the ring-like polar cloud structure would resolve to be a hexagonal phenomenon similar to Saturn’s.

“The cameras of Voyager 1 on Feb. 14, 1990, pointed back toward the sun and took a series of pictures of the sun and the planets, making the first ever "portrait" of our solar system as seen from the outside. In the course of taking this mosaic consisting of a total of 60 frames, Voyager 1 made several images of the inner solar system from a distance of approximately 4 billion miles and about 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane. Thirty-nine wide angle frames link together six of the planets of our solar system in this mosaic. Outermost Neptune is 30 times further from the sun than Earth. Our sun is seen as the bright object in the center of the circle of frames. The wide-angle image of the sun was taken with the camera's darkest filter (a methane absorption band) and the shortest possible exposure (5 thousandths of a second) to avoid saturating the camera's vidicon tube with scattered sunlight. The sun is not large as seen from Voyager, only about one-fortieth of the diameter as seen from Earth, but is still almost 8 million times brighter than the brightest star in Earth's sky, Sirius. The result of this great brightness is an image with multiple reflections from the optics in the camera. Wide-angle images surrounding the sun also show many artifacts attributable to scattered light in the optics. These were taken through the clear filter with one second exposures. The insets show the planets magnified many times. Narrow-angle images of Earth, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune were acquired as the spacecraft built the wide-angle mosaic. Jupiter is larger than a narrow-angle pixel and is clearly resolved, as is Saturn with its rings. Uranus and Neptune appear larger than they really are because of image smear due to spacecraft motion during the long (15 second) exposures. From Voyager's great distance Earth and Venus are mere points of light, less than the size of a picture element even in the narrow-angle camera. Earth was a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size. Coincidentally, Earth lies right in the center of one of the scattered light rays resulting from taking the image so close to the sun.”

Above & image from/at:

photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00451
Credit: JPL Photojournal website

Very interesting:

search.app/AAhdq5o3Ktwbn4Sc9
Credit: Forbes website

Also:

nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/photo_gallery/caption/solar_family.txt

search.app/ytfM4BWfjD7NT7hy5
Both above credit: NSSDCA website

I’ve never seen a hard copy of this humbling & historic image. You can actually make out the slightlest hints of Saturn's rings, especially to the left...awesome.

The artifact/marking in the upper right corner is where I painstakingly removed the adhered remnants of another photo.

“This computer-enhanced image of Saturn shows the rings and their shadows on the lighted crescent of the planet. Voyager 1 took the picture on Nov. 13, 1980 after the spacecraft had passed by the planet and was looking back from a distance of 1,500,000 kilometers (930,000 miles). The bright limb of Saturn is clearly visible through the rings. This image was exposed to bring out detail in the rings, causing the illuminated crescent of the planet to be overexposed. The inner region of the rings (the C-ring) scatters light in a way that caused it to look bluer than the outer rings (the B- and A-rings). This information can be used to determine the nature of individual particles in the rings. The Voyager Project is managed for NASA by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.”

I really expected to find this...somewhere "official", like the JPL Photojournal...well, I was wrong. Disappointingly wrong.

It's here though:

sciencephotogallery.com/featured/voyager-1-photo-of-satur...

And here, since it was the cover photo of the American Association for the Advancement of Science's magazine ‘Science’, Volume 212, Issue 4491, 10 Apr 1981:

www.science.org/toc/science/212/4491
Credit: American Association for the Advancement of Science website

Posted to accompany my scanned/posted hardcopy of the same image, and to reveal the amazing landscape that was imaged...and revealed by Donald Mitchell.
Bravo Mr. Mitchell!

At/from:

twitter.com/DonaldM38768041/status/1354514221048840194/ph...
Credit: Donald Mitchell/"X" website

“Venera 13, touched down on the surface of Venus at 03:57:21 UT on March 1, 1982. It landed at 7.55° S, 303.69° E on the rolling hills adjacent to Dolya Tessera east of Navka Planitia. Measurements after landing showed that the atmospheric pressure was 89.5 times that of Earth with a temperature of 465° C (although the interior of the lander was kept at a more comfortable 30° C). Immediately after landing, both telephotometers successfully ejected their covers and started scanning the scene. One of the telephotometers was programed to scan the entire 180° scene successively in clear, red, green and blue detectors – a process that would take almost an hour even with the improved data uplink. In order to return at least a fragment of full-color data in the nominal 30-minute design life of the lander, the other telephotometer was programmed to scan the entire 180° scene first through the clear filter followed by scanning just a 60° segment on the right side (where a 9-centimeter-wide color calibration target was deployed) through red, green and blue filters. Both telephotometers repeated this scanning pattern until contact was lost with its carrier passing 36,000 kilometers overhead.”

After transmitting for a record 127 minutes from the surface of Venus (a record which stands to this day), Venera 13 managed to transmit a total of 11 full panoramas and 10 partial ones. The panoramas were combined to fill in gaps from missing data and create full color views. With the Sun 54° above the horizon (the equivalent solar time of 9:10 AM), about 2.5% of the Sun’s light reached the surface to give an overall orange to yellow appearance to the scene due to the lack of bluer wavelengths penetrating the dense atmosphere. The huge improvement in image quality compared to the earlier Venera 9 and 10 panoramas was apparent with objects as small as a fraction of a millimeter visible at the foot of the lander. The landing site, with rolling ridges visible in the distance, was dominated by flat, layered strata with small rocks and fine grain material eroded from the bedrock filling the hollows. The movement of small grains visible at the foot of the lander between successive scans of the telephotometers were consistent with a gentle (if not very refreshing) breeze with a speed of 0.3 to 0.6 meters per second. Venera 14 repeated this feat four days later landing 950 km southwest of its sister on March 5, 1982. Along with the panoramas returned during the 57-minute active life of Venera 14, these images remain the only color views with have of the surface of Venus even four decades later.”

www.drewexmachina.com/2022/03/01/first-pictures-color-vie...
Credit: Andrew LePage/Drew ExMachina website


“Venera 13 Lander image of the surface of Venus. The lander touched down at 7.5 S, 303 E, east of Phoebe Regio, on 1 March, 1982. It survived on the surface for 2 hours, 7 minutes. The lander was equipped with two opposite-facing cameras. The image is a black and white frame of color image vg261_262. The surface is made up of flat, platy rocks and soil. Parts of the lander and semi-circular lens cover can be seen in the image.”

The above paraphrased from:

nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/html/object_page/v13_yg06847.html
Credit: NSSDCA website

The view is from camera no. 1 and is of “side A” of the spacecraft.

And…last, but NOT LEAST, the definitive work WRT Venusian surface imagery, by Donald Mitchell:

mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogVenus.htm

mentallandscape.com/V_Venera11.htm

twitter.com/DonaldM38768041/status/1354514221048840194/ph...

LOOK AT THE “X” LINK…I HAD NO IDEA THAT THIS KIND OF SURFACE RELIEF WAS IMAGED…BY ANY OF THE GODLESS MAGGOT’S VENERA LANDERS!!!
DID YOU??? AMAZING!!!
NOR THE MOVEMENT OF GRAINS OF SOIL DEPOSITED ON THE LANDER - DUE TO SURFACE WINDS!!!

Also thanks to Mr. Mitchell: The pentagonal pennant seen affixed to the saw-tooth festooned landing/impact ring, directly under the jettisoned camera lens cover:

mentallandscape.com/V_Pennants.htm

And, while I’m here, regarding the aforementioned saw-tooth features:

“...metal teeth were added to the periphery of the impact ring in an effort to reduce the spin and oscillation during the descent and prevent the rough landings experienced by the 1978 missions.”

Per Huntress & Marov, “Soviet Robots in the Solar System”, p. 322.

🇷🇺 = 👹

Viking 2 launch vehicle documentation/close-out photograph.