March 26, 2012

• Venera 13

  Today the planet Venus will be visible to the naked eye in the daytime sunlight for the first time since Abraham Lincoln pointed it out in the sky in 1865...look west and find the crescent moon. It should be on it's tip. Be careful not to stare into the sun. The planet Venus is also in conjunction tonight with the Moon and Jupiter. The heavens shine brightly...bringing me to my latest art project.
  Venusian Landscape
  original bw image from the Soviet Venera 13 landing craft, 1981
  (colorized and stuff by yours truly...lots more to come)
  
  ""...mission consisted of a bus and an attached descent craft. The descent craft/lander was a hermetically sealed pressure vessel, which contained most of the instrumentation and electronics, mounted on a ring-shaped landing platform and topped by an antenna. The design was similar to the earlier Venera 9–12 landers. It carried instruments to take chemical and isotopic measurements, monitor the spectrum of scattered sunlight, and record electric discharges during its descent phase through the Venusian atmosphere. The spacecraft utilized a camera system, an X-ray fluorescence spectrometer, a screw drill and surface sampler, a dynamic penetrometer, and a seismometer to conduct investigations on the surface...."" ~ wki

  

  ...that's all for now, folks!

  • 4:48 pm
  • 3 Comments