Thursday, September 08, 2022

Fact Check: Does Viral Post Really Show 'Clearest Image of Venus'?

BY ED BROWNE ON 9/5/22
NEWSWEEK


An old viral image of the surface of the planet Venus was making the rounds on Reddit on Monday morning.

While the image is no doubt a stunning vision of the hostile, crushing conditions on one of Earth's closest planetary neighbors, it is not quite what it seems.

Another processed image of the planet Venus taken by the Magellan probe that orbited the planet from 1990 to 1994. The planet is known for its hot surface.
SSV/MIPL/MAGELLAN TEAM/NASA


The Claim


On the evening of September 4 a Reddit user posted the below image of the surface of Venus to the subreddit r/interestingasf***, along with the caption: "Clearest image of the surface of Venus. From Soviet Venera 13 in 1982."

By Monday morning the post proved popular, having received more than 42,000 upvotes as of 7:30 a.m. ET.

It is not the first time similar posts have been made. The exact same photo, edited to include the caption "This is the only clear photo ever taken from the surface of Venus", was posted by multiple people to Twitter and Facebook in 2021.



The Facts


It is true that the image really does show the surface of Venus from the perspective of the Venera-13 lander—a Soviet-built spacecraft that landed on Venus' surface on March 1, 1982. However, the image has been heavily processed.

The Soviet Union's extensive Venera program saw many such probes being sent to the planet in order to gather information. Today the program is regarded as pivotal to our current understanding of Venus.

None of the probes lasted long, however, due to the extremely harsh surface conditions of Venus. There, temperatures are about 900 degrees Fahrenheit and the air pressure is more than 90 times that of Earth.

Venera-13 survived for just over two hours, in which time it successfully transmitted a number of images back to Earth.

U.S. researcher Don P. Mitchell, formerly of Princeton University and Microsoft Research, has investigated Soviet exploration of Venus and the original Venera image data. He did not create the color image seen in the social media posts, but he did construct a similar black-and-white one.

On his website, Mitchell states that the original Soviet versions of the images included full panoramas, both in color and black-and-white. However, image quality for the color images was poorer than the black-and-white ones.

Mitchell therefore combined the two types of panoramas together, and processed them so that they appeared as normal landscape images rather than panoramas.



"The Venera panoramas are spherical projections," Mitchell states on his website. "They can be remapped to perspective projections and overlayed (using Adobe Photoshop CS2) to produce views that give a better subjective impression of the Venusian surface."

He added in a 2019 tweet that missing pieces from the panoramas were "filled by duplicates and reversed duplicates". The following tweet thread gives an insight into the production process.

So some of what can be seen in the photos is not necessarily an accurate representation of the lander's surroundings. What's more, NASA states on its website that the true color of the Venera images is "difficult to judge because the Venerian atmosphere filters out blue light."

The original black and white panorama images can be seen below.

A black-and-white version of the Venera-13 panorama photos of Venus' surface that were later extensively processed. The lander touched down on March 1, 1982.
UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS

News agency AFP reached out to Mitchell in February 2019 regarding social media claims about the Venera images. He said: "I created the [black and white] images. The colorized images are done by other people, and in my opinion are not very accurate."

Newsweek has reached out to Mitchell for comment.


The Ruling



Needs Context.


The accomplishments of the scientists behind the Venera-13 probe should not be understated; the probe took the first color pictures ever transmitted from Venus.

However, the image currently being shared as "the clearest image of the surface of Venus" is heavily processed and has been described as "not very accurate" by a researcher who has studied the data extensively.

FACT CHECK BY NEWSWEEK


 


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