Less Well Known Pieces of Astrophotography

lhs3020b:

Here are a couple of the less well-known pieces of astrophotography.

These two images were originally sent back to Earth from the Soviet Venera program probes (I believe these specific two came from Venera 13, though I don't have the citation to hand).

That's right – that barren rocky wasteland is Venus.

These images are particularly notable because Venus has a surface temperature of over 460 Celsius and a pressure of around 90 bars. That atmosphere is also pure poison. The clouds you can see aren't water vapour; they're composed of droplets of sulphuric acid. The 'air' itself is 94% carbon dioxide, with most of the rest being nitrogen and a lot of weird nasties.

None of the Venera landers remained operational for more than a couple of hours once on Venus's surface. But frankly, given how unbelievably hostile the surface conditions are there, it's a miracle they were able to function at all.