Also, i was excited to find that someone made a real eye perspective of the pictures returned by Venera 13. One thing makes me wonder though…how did they obtain data for the middle/upper part of the image, when it didn’t exist in the original photo releases? Was this a combintation of radar extrapulations and combined with the known visible surface data?

I too have been looking at these few and rare pictures since I was a child. It is nice to that we are still facinated, decades later.

To whom, then does Earth really belong?

its just true.

if the Soviets had landed on Mars successfully (and credit to them for trying to land there YEARS ahead of Viking), I suspect that they would probably not have developed the Venera program. the second paragraph recognizes this and in retrospect, Venus turned out to be a much harder target to explore than Mars could ever be.

besides, the article is not about how awesome NASA or the USSR was, its about the incredible projections that have only become available 30+ years after the mission end.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera_7

Both you and Don Mitchell did a great job at adjusting the photos for that purpose.

Also, for that Tom Candee fellow who turned up his nose at this stuff while declaring the whole of human space exploration fake and a conspiracy, allow me to quote XKCD concerning people like you:

“Please, stop, because seeing you like this breaks my heart. Conspiracy theories represent a known glitch in human reasoning.”

Or better yet, a quote from the same place: “Dear God, I would like to file a bug report.”

i also do not know if some of the extensions on the craft were extended after some images were made.

Besides, the data is not a secret anymore. I would also suspect that if all the image data was not real… Don would not have been able to compile all those bits and have them line-up just right to get the above image. If it were faked with 30 year old technology, you would see obvious flaws and misalignments in Don’s results.

Is there any detail available of the calculations which were made to affect a landing in one piece on a piece of flatish ground?

I’m really curious how these guys actually specced the thing. I would say it reeks of bullshit myself, but conspiracies aside, there must have been some serious planning involved and a lot of speculation. In the days of big transistors, it must have had a fair old bulk of electronics. What was it powered by, how were the photos recorded?

I think it is so highly unlikely the even took place, I’d like some info on how they actually did it (with proper data). Is that still a secret after all these years?

Even though this is old content… i make a point of posting it whenever possible. Not enough people have seen the incredible work of Don Mitchell and his re-working of old Soviet Venera surface images of Venus. This is a new world to us using 30+ year…

I hope to live to witness it!

Yes, I noticed the metallic salmon color in that other image as well and thought that it was probably closer to reality, but I think it is another attempt at color filtering. Rayleigh scattering algorithms yield a result very close to that color under conditions similar to those at the Venus surface. However, there are other compounds in the atmosphere there that probably shift the color one way or the other. A good example of this is sulfur dioxide. Carbon Dioxide, which is what makes up a good majority of the Venusian atmosphere would yield a white or clear color, but at 90 to 100 bars and 860 degrees F at the surface and sulfur dioxide added, we get more reddish/orange to dark yellow/tan.
Also, the amount of ambient light at lander location at any given time will likely shift from darker to lighter versions of surface and sky color as is the case with Mars.

i think i might be tempted to get the original right and then move on to the second.

what do you think of the greenish tinge to the rocks from the original venera images? that always seemed strange to me and yet gorgeous among the surrounding orange/yellows and browns.

i will go into the file again and work on removing blue directly from that channel.

thanks for helping me get it closer to accurate although, we may never REALLY know. its a safe bet its not blue, that we can assume.