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
Post
Replies:
4
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
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
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
