False-colour projection of the surface of the northern hemisphere of Venus. This image was constructed largely from data gathered by the Magellan rada

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False-colour projection of the surface of the northern hemisphere of Venus. This image was constructed largely from data gathered by the Magellan radar-mapping spacecraft during its first cycle of observations. The north pole is in the centre of the image with longitude 0 at right. The bright spot below centre is the Maxwell Montes range, the highest part of the planet. Just to the left of this is the Lakshmi Planum plateau. Extensive faulting may be seen just above centre, to the right of this is the vast Atalanta Planitia plain. The Magellan data has been supplemented with earlier Pioneer Venus data, the general colour hue comes from Russian Venera images.

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Size: 4292px × 5147px
Photo credit: © NASA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No

Keywords: astronomy, cosmology, hemisphere, imagery, magellan, north, planet, planetary, science, venus