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We have only taken six photos on Venus. Here they are

Mar 8, 2023 by Dunja Djudjic 3 Comments

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photos venus surface collage

Although our celestial neighbor seems to be convenient for exploration, there are only a handful of photos ever taken on Venus’s surface. Its world is hostile, with scorching heat and harsh pressure which destroy almost any lander that touches it.

However, four spacecraft survived to tell the story of Venus and successfully returned to Earth. It was way back in the 1870s and 1890s, and these landers have been the only ones to take photos of Venus up close and personal. In this article, we bring you these photos, along with some fun facts about Venus that you may not have known.

[Related reading: NASA shares first-ever visible light images of Venus’s surface]

It was in 1975 and 1982 that four of the Soviet Union’s Venera probes took photos of Venus’ surface. NASA got relatively close last year, but not as close as Veneras. The landers scanned the surface back and forth and created panoramic images of their surroundings. “They revealed yellow skies and cracked, desolate landscapes that were both alien and familiar,” The Planetary Society writes. “Views of a world that may have once been like Earth before experiencing catastrophic climate change.”

photos venus surface close

Credits: Russian Academy of Sciences / Ted Stryk

The man behind the panoramas of Venus’s surface is Ted Stryk. He is a philosophy professor at Roane State Community College in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and specializes in reconstructing images from early space missions. He used data from the Russian Academy of Sciences and reconstructed the best-possible versions of the original Venera panoramas. Here are the rest of the images:

photos venus surface rover

Credits: Russian Academy of Sciences / Ted Stryk

photos venus surface lander

Credits: Russian Academy of Sciences / Ted Stryk

photos venus surface yellow soil

Credits: Russian Academy of Sciences / Ted Stryk

photos venus surface black and white

Credits: Russian Academy of Sciences / Ted Stryk

photos venus surface rocks

Credits: Russian Academy of Sciences / Ted Stryk

Fun facts

First, let me tell you a quick fact about the name of the probes. Venera stands for “Venus” in Russian, as well as in my native language, Serbian.

And now, here’s another fact I’ve never thought of before, yet it makes sense and it blew my mind. Did you know that Venus isn’t the closest planet to Earth? More than half of the time, it’s actually Mercury! I was today years old when I find this out, and here’s an animation that explains it better than I would.

Finally, I also find it incredible that these are the only Venus surface photos ever taken in nearly 40 years. And they’re quite enough to make my imagination run wild and think about what this would have looked like before… And what we might discover if someday scientists make a lender that will withstand Venus’s hostile environment.

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Related posts:

US Copyright Office: Photos Taken by Animals Have No Copyright. Nor Do Photos Taken by God. NASA shares James Webb’s test photos, the deepest photos of the universe ever taken These are the best photos of Earth taken from the ISS in 2020 NASA shares first-ever visible light images of Venus’s surface

Filed Under: Inspiration Tagged With: space exploration, space photography, Venus

About Dunja Djudjic

Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.

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Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.

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