No, there is no magnificent 'planetary parade' in the evening right now as the internet shouts from everywhere but on the other hand there is also more to see than just Jupiter high in the sky - as I could confirm Wednesday from Bochum, Germany, at 51.5°N, #Venus is already a bright if rather low evening star while #Saturn and #Mercury could still be spotted above her: see https://www.facebook.com/dan.fischer.393/posts/pfbid027a6qUBbjXPf96BtzV89HNTcEA8Z2y9gorSCns8sTzS3nTFUpngTXwagopfUAw6Ngl for more pictures and hard numbers!

No, there is no magnificent 'planetary parade' in the evening right now as the internet shouts from everywhere but on the other hand there is also more to see than just Jupiter high in the sky - as I could confirm Wednesday from Bochum, Germany, at 51.5°N, #Venus is already a bright if rather low evening star while #Saturn and #Mercury could still be spotted above her: see https://www.facebook.com/dan.fischer.393/posts/pfbid027a6qUBbjXPf96BtzV89HNTcEA8Z2y9gorSCns8sTzS3nTFUpngTXwagopfUAw6Ngl for more pictures and hard numbers!

APOD from 2026-02-24

#Planet Parade over Sydney Opera House

This week, just after sunset, #Mercury, #Venus, #Saturn, and #Jupiter are visible to the naked eye in a line from the horizon. #Uranus and #Neptune can be seen with a #telescope. Best viewed this weekend globally along the ecliptic plane.

HD image at https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260224.html#space #astronomy #planets #earth

APOD from 2026-02-24

#Planet Parade over Sydney Opera House

This week, just after sunset, #Mercury, #Venus, #Saturn, and #Jupiter are visible to the naked eye in a line from the horizon. #Uranus and #Neptune can be seen with a #telescope. Best viewed this weekend globally along the ecliptic plane.

HD image at https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260224.html#space #astronomy #planets #earth

Hello.

A Venus day is longer than its year.

Day: 5,832 hours
Year: 5,390 hours

That is all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus?wprov=sfti1#Orbit_and_rotation

#Astronomy #Time #Relativity #Science #MilkyWay #Venus

Hello.

A Venus day is longer than its year.

Day: 5,832 hours
Year: 5,390 hours

That is all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus?wprov=sfti1#Orbit_and_rotation

#Astronomy #Time #Relativity #Science #MilkyWay #Venus

A new look at radar data for Venus obtained by NASA's Magellan spacecraft in the 1990s suggests a large underground cavity exists that was created by a lava flow, the first subsurface feature ever detected there. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/02/10/world/science-health/radar-underground-lava-tube-venus/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #worldnews #sciencehealth #space #satellites #venus #planets #nasa

@Yogthos There is also life on Venus at that temperature 462°С.
#^https://www.nkj.ru/archive/articles/20687/
# venus # life # cosmos # space # universe

This is only a small part of what we can reach, but in general, the entire universe is inhabited by life; it's just that with our limited senses, most of this life cannot be detected.

Time for a new topic. We will look at Viking 2 later.
Pop quiz - which was the first solar system object after Earth and the Moon to be mapped? You at the back? - sorry, it's not Mars. No, the first after Earth and the Moon was Venus, by Francesco Bianchini, working in Rome. He made a globe of Venus in 1727 and published maps in a book in 1728. Of course the features are illusions, probably contrast effects in the eye.
#maps #venus #bianchini

Guten Morgen - Tässle Kaffee ☕️?

Bin heute Morgen um ca. 9:45 Uhr wieder bei #ZweiaufEins auf Radio RBB Eins zu hören. Thema diesmal: Warum (heutige) Gottheiten meist männlich vorgestellt werden. Denn am Anfang der #Religionsgeschichte stehen doch häufiger Symbolisierungen von Frauen, wie sie etwa in Darstellungen von sog. #Venus - Figurinen, der ägyptischen #Isis, der hinduistischen #Durga & der Jüdinnen #Esther und #Maria bis heute präsent bleiben. https://scilogs.spektrum.de/natur-des-glaubens/warum-sollte-gott-ein-mann-ein-vater-sein/

Venera 10 landed in the area shown here at two scales - at left a map spanning 500 km shows major landforms, at right, full Magellan resolution gives us details of part of the landing ellipse. We see mixed geology - the dark areas are smooth (ish) plains, probably sediments blown around by the wind. What makes sediment on Venus? Impacts, chemical weathering and maybe volcanic ash. A big bright area (Hyndla Regio) is an upland cut by many faults.
#venus #venera10

We have seen the Venera 9 and 10 panoramas, but take a look at this from the Planetary Society:

https://www.planetary.org/space-images/rectified-vs-original-venera-9-and-10-panoramas

(presented without any explanation on that page). This version has more detail:

https://www.planetary.org/space-images/standing-on-venus-with-venera-10

These are artistic re-workings of the panoramas, rearranging bits of the images to create a more understandable view. I show them because they pop up in image searches and are often misrepresented as original images.
#venus #venera10

Here is an old Soviet version of the Venera 10 image, a bit too contrasty so details get lost especially at the horizon. But what we see is different from Venera 9's boulders. This is a nearly flat area with platy slabs of rock interspersed with darker gravelly soil. One of the rocky slabs is cracked. The two objects are a densitometer to measure surface hardness and a lens cover ejected from the camera after landing.
#venus #venera10

OK, what did Venera 10 see? This is the link I gave earlier to Don Mitchell's page about Venus images:

http://mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogVenus.htm

and here is the raw Venera 10 image:

http://mentallandscape.com/C_Venera10.jpg

His expert processing gives us this:

http://mentallandscape.com/C_Venera10_Processed.jpg

(raw, gaps filled from second image, remaining gaps filled by interpolation)

Both of these Venera landers carried a second camera on the opposite side of the lander, but in each case it failed to operate.
#venus #venera10

If Venera 10 landed in the hills, I might expect a landscape similar to that at Venera 9's site, lots of blocks where the rock has been broken by dense patterns of faults. But it didn't see that. Tomorrow we will see what the second image of the surface of Venus revealed.
#venus #venera10

The south part of the map contains a large volcanic shield (Samodiva Mons) which has released lava flows showing up as brighter lobate markings extending north and east from the shield. The 300 km circle is the landing location - it could be anywhere in there. The closeup, 100 km wide, shows the plains cut by ridges (east-west) and fractures (north-south). The bright hills are cut by many fractures. Little domes at the left edge are small volcanoes. What did Venera 10 land on?
#venus #venera10

Venera 10 landed in the area shown here at two scales - at left a map spanning 500 km shows major landforms, at right, full Magellan resolution gives us details of part of the landing ellipse. We see mixed geology - the dark areas are smooth (ish) plains, probably sediments blown around by the wind. What makes sediment on Venus? Impacts, chemical weathering and maybe volcanic ash. A big bright area (Hyndla Regio) is an upland cut by many faults.
#venus #venera10

Venera 10 launched 6 days after V9 (14 June '75) and landed 3 days after its sibling (25 October). This map shows the area. Like Venera 9 it was east of Beta Regio, but 1500 km further south. As with all landers so far the target was essentially unknown, only seen in very low resolution radar reflectivity images from Earth. Here we see a landscape of bright (rough) and dark (smoother) features, which we will see closer tomorrow.
#venus #venera10

... but when Magellan images became available they attracted more attention:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Vladimir-Gubenko/publication/258780090_Perspectives_of_the_bistatic_radar_and_occultation_studying_of_the_Venus_atmosphere_and_surface/links/53e8b0a60cf21cc29fdc837b/Perspectives-of-the-bistatic-radar-and-occultation-studying-of-the-Venus-atmosphere-and-surface.pdf

https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2016/pdf/2094.pdf

(similar content, slightly more condensed URL)

If I continued with my Venus atlas project I would certainly have been mapping this stuff, but it's not going to happen.

Tomorrow it's time to move on the Venera 10.
#venus #venera9

When we looked at Soviet lunar missions I showed the Luna 22 bistatic radar image of part of the Moon. It didn't tell us much we didn't know about the Moon (rocky surfaces and slopes facing the radar will reflect it on to the detector). But a year later Venera 9 used bistatic radar to study Venus, an utterly unknown surface, so in a sense the Luna 22 lunar data are like 'ground truth' for Venus. The results were published at the time in a Russian journal...
#venus #venera9