Venus Animation

Knowledge concerning the surface of Venus comes from a limited amount of information obtained by the series of Russian Venera landers and primarily from extensive radar imaging of the planet.  The radar imaging of the planet has been performed both from Earth-based facilities and from space probes.  The most extensive radar imaging was obtained from the Magellan orbiter in a 4-year period in the early 1990s.  The adjacent animation shows the topography of the surface as determined using the Magellan synthetic aperture radar (black areas are regions not examined by Magellan).