The surface of Venus is often thought to be completely obscured by its thick sulfuric acid clouds. However, at the right wavelengths in the near infrared the surface can be seen by looking at the night side of the planet. At wavelengths such as 1.18 micrometres (used for these images taken with IRIS2 on the Anglo-Australian Telescope) the glow of the hot surface can be seen and highland regions are visible because they are colder (and hence darker). While the clouds scatter infrared radiation, they do not absorb much and the radiation eventually finds its way out.

The most prominent feature on these images is the dark spot of the highland region Beta Regio, above centre. Dark regions below centre correspond to Phoebe Regio. To see surface features the images need to be corrected for cloud strucutre which would otherwise dominate the images. This is done using images at wavelengths that do not see the surface. The two images here were derived using different methods of cloud correction.

From:   Bailey, et al., 2008, Planetary and Space Science 56, 1385.

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