Venus - Venera 9 Lander

The surface of Venus from the Venera 9 Lander

Venus
Venera 9 Lander image of the surface of Venus at about 32 S, 291 E. The Lander touched down at 5:13 UT with the sun near zenith on 22 October 1975 and operated for 53 minutes, allowing return of this single image. The white object at the bottom of the image is part of the lander. The distortion is caused by the Venera imaging system. Angular and partly weathered rocks, about 30 to 40 cm across, dominate the landscape, many partly buried in soil. The horizon is visible in the upper left and right corners.

Automatic gain control and logarithmic quantization were used to handle the unknown dynamic range of illumination. The raw image was converted to optical density according to Russian calibration data, then to linear radiance for image processing. It was interpolated with windowed sinc filter to avoid post-aliasing (a "pixilated" appearance), and the modulation transfer function ("aperture") of the camera was corrected with a 1 + 0.2*frequency**2 emphasis. This was then written out as 8-bit gamma-corrected values, using the sRGB standard gamma of 2.2. The bottom image is a digitally in-painted version, using Bertalmio's isophote-flow algorithm. (Venera 9 Lander, processed surface image) (Image posted with permission, copyright 2003 Don P. Mitchell. All rights reserved.)
Larger image ( 79K)

High resolution tiff file (227K)

Location & Time Information
Date/Time (UT): 1975-10-22 T 05:13
Distance/Range (km): 0.002
Central Latitude/Longitude (deg): +32.,291. E
Orbit(s): lander

Imaging Information
Area or Feature Type: surface, lander
Instrument: Television Camera (Panoramic Telephotometer)
Instrument Resolution (pixels): 128 x 512, 6 bit
Instrument Field of View (deg): 170. (horizontal)
Filter: N/A
Illumination Incidence Angle (deg): N/A
Phase Angle (deg): N/A
Instrument Look Direction: N/A
Surface Emission Angle (deg): N/A

Ordering Information
CD-ROM Volume: N/A
NASA Image ID number: Venera 9 lander processed image
Other Image ID number: N/A
NSSDC Data Set ID (Photo): 75-050D-01A
NSSDC Data Set ID (CD): N/A
Other ID: N/A

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[NASA Logo] Authors/Curators:

Dave Williams, dave.williams@nasa.gov, (301) 286-1258
Code 690.1, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA

Jay Friedlander, jay.s.friedlander@nasa.gov, (301) 286-7172
Code 612.4, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA

NASA Official: Dr. David R. Williams, David.R.Williams@nasa.gov
Last updated: 24 September 2015