Venus fractures

Used with permission
A 105 km wide radar image covering a region where high, bright remnants of older surface stick out above lower areas flooded by dark, smooth lava. The prominent bright fracture pattern within the lava is a set of interconnected channels, perhaps created by lava draining through tectonically-controlled fractures.

Used with permission
A 140 km wide radar image of a heavily fractured region of Venus. Note the partially preserved impact crater, whose eastern part was destroyed during the creation of the dark (smooth) valley that runs down the centre of the image.

Used with permission
A composite perspective view made by draping a radar image onto a computer model of topography, showing part of the Dali Chasma fracture system on Venus. The radar-bright zone along the highest part of the curved ridge may represent a change in surface composition, and could show where the temperature has become low enough for iron sulphide to condense onto the rock surface to form iron pyrites (‘fools gold’).

Used with permission
What’s this? A 130 km wide image of a partly-fractured, partly-lava covered region of Venus with a 200 km length of a winding (sinuous) channel snaking its way across the centre. It resembles a meandering river on Earth, but cannot have been carved by flowing water because Venus has long been far too hot for that. It was probably created by flowing lava.

All Images: NASA-JPL Photojournal

Continue your journey across the surface of Venus:
Terrain: An introduction
Volcanoes
Lava flows
Craters
Coronae
Mountain belts

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