I have a pretty good hit rate when it comes to picking out Venus in the night sky. It usually looks like one of the brightest and largest stars, and typically hugs the horizon.
I enjoyed this article covering the only photos we have from the surface of Venus—the last being from 1982.
I find it fascinating that Venus is one of our closest planets (Fun fact: Mercury is in fact the closest planet to Earth), yet we have no photographic evidence of what Venus’ surface looks like other than a 57-minute photoshoot from 40 years ago.
The photoshoot lasted less than an hour because Venus’ surface temperature fo 450 degrees Celsius and atmospheric pressure of 90 atmospheres (equivalent to a depth of 900 metres), made it extremely difficult to get even a few photos.
Think about all of life on Earth, and everything that has ever existed on this planet, and imagine if the only image you’ve seen was from a 57-minute photoshoot, on a random day, in a random place somewhere on the planet.
Of course, our planet is lucky to be teeming with life and much more interesting that Venus. But these photos got me thinking a lot about perspective.