Note: The beginning of summer offers a dazzling view of Venus. It reaches its greatest elongation — its greatest angular distance — 45 degrees to the east of the Sun on June 6.
The hemispheric view of Venus, as revealed by more than a decade of radar investigations culminating in the 1990-1994 Magellan mission, is centered at 180 degrees east longitude. The Magellan spacecraft imaged more than 98 percent of Venus at a resolution of about 100 m; the effective resolution of this image is about 3 km.
A mosaic of the Magellan images (most with illumination from the west) forms the image base. Gaps in the Magellan coverage were filled with images from the Earth-based Arecibo radar in a region centered roughly on zero degree latitude and longitude, and with a neutral tone elsewhere (primarily near the south pole). The composite image was processed to improve contrast and to emphasize small features, and was color-coded to represent elevation.
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