In the crater paper, Cleopatra is called 'Cleopatra Patera'. That was its first name but the Patera (which implies it is a volcanic caldera) was dropped when people decided it was an impact crater.

On another topic I have never seen a breakdown of what was done by V 15 and 16 individually. They are always combined. During the cruise to Venus some speculated that if V15 mapped the north pole, V16 would map the south, but it was not to be.

Tomorrow, a new mission.
#venus #venera15

I got sidetracked by Magellan a bit there... but back to Veneras 15 and 16. They didn't just make radar maps, they measured surface elevations and studied the atmosphere, but the radar images always get most attention. Now for the first time it was possible to analyze the planet's geology. Here is a paper by Basilevsky and colleagues on tectonic features:

https://adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1986LPSC...16..399B

and another on craters:

https://adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1986LPSC...16..413I

#venus #venera15

I should point out another set of maps of Venus, the ones USGS produces as a record of Venus feature names:

https://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Page/venus1to5m_Radar

The index would be clearer if it had a radar image base. Click on a quad and it will appear... let's look at the Lakshmi Planum sheet:

https://asc-planetarynames-data.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/v7_comp.pdf

and the Russian version from yesterday's link:

https://rgcps.asu.edu/venera-mapsheets/V04_M60N295.png

Lakshmi Planum is the dark area seen earlier in Earth-based radar images.
#maps #venus #venera15

There's a bit more information here:

https://petermasek.tripod.com/venera15.html

- I can't vouch for the viewing software, I am just pointing out the details on this page... and if you look further down there are a lot of other interesting links to play with.

Here:

https://rgcps.asu.edu/venera-15-16/

are links to high resolution versions of the map quads shown by Don Mitchell.

I will look at a few interesting features tomorrow.
#venus #maps #venera15

We were looking at Veneras 15 & 16, the Soviet radar mapping missions. A good place to go for images is Don Mitchell's page:

http://mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogVenus.htm

(just below half way down the page).

The mapped area was portrayed in 27 map quadrangles. A nice (but very rare) atlas was compiled from the mission data.

Here is a comparison of Venera and Magellan resolutions:

https://science.nasa.gov/photojournal/venus-comparison-of-venera-and-magellan-resolutions/

Now the Soviet images look mediocre but they were our first good view of surface geology.
#venus #venera15