I obtained a detailed profile of Venus from one of my transit images. It reveals some interesting aspects about the planet:



Immediately noticable is how non-circular it is in profile. In addition, note how flat it is in the southwest quadrant as opposed to the northeast. Also, you can see huge mountains (at about 5:30 and 11:00) and deep valleys (particularly at 9:00 and 3:30) and generally a very uneven surface, much more uneven than the Earth is in profile (of course, the profile of the Earth is much subdued because of the presence of the oceans - even so, Venus' profile indicates a huge range of topography). And finally, note that you can see features in the atmosphere, the haze that surrounds the planet in this image. Also note that relative to its size, Venus' atmosphere is much thicker than Earth's, and much more turbulant and uneven in it's apparent thickness. That's one messed up planet, for sure.

Bitchin' picture!

Have you corrected for the distortion of our atmosphere?

your pic is awesome man. i was wondering if the shape was as represented here or if there was something that caused the distortion. very cool.

Atmospheric turbulence (ours), most likely. Venus is an oblate spheroid, similar to Earth.

Folks, I make a huge mistake. That image is due to atmospheric distortion. I didn't believe it because if it was, it was the worst distortion I've seen. Well, that's exactly what it was. My apologies. I feel very stupid, but I guess that's why they call this "amatuer" astronomy.

(June 8, 2012 at 10:15 am)orogenicman Wrote: Immediately noticable is how non-circular it is in profile. In addition, note how flat it is in the southwest quadrant as opposed to the northeast. Also, you can see huge mountains (at about 5:30 and 11:00) and deep valleys (particularly at 9:00 and 3:30) and generally a very uneven surface, much more uneven than the Earth is in profile (of course, the profile of the Earth is much subdued because of the presence of the oceans - even so, Venus' profile indicates a huge range of topography). And finally, note that you can see features in the atmosphere, the haze that surrounds the planet in this image. Also note that relative to its size, Venus' atmosphere is much thicker than Earth's, and much more turbulant and uneven in it's apparent thickness. That's one messed up planet, for sure.

Actually, Venus has somewhat less topographic relief compared to the earth. If an image of the entire earth is the height of your entire computer monitor screen set to 1776X1000 pixels , the highest mountain on earth would be less than one pixel high, and deepest valley much less than 1 pixel deep compare to surrounding terrain. The true topological deviation from spheriod of any major planet can not be discerned by eye in an image sized to fit your monitor .

Only with Jupitor and Saturn can you easily discern by eye centrifugal deviation from spheriod of the equatorial bulge. Earth's equatorial bulge would be only about 2 pixles high. You would not be able to see it in a monitor sized image. Venus has practically no rotation. So it has no equatorial bulge. It's as close to a perfect sphere as you can get amongst the planets.

orogenicman, that's still an awesome pic and i'm glad you shared.

chuck, that's a helluva bit of info ... and cool.