It's been five years since NASA's Magellan spacecraft returned its last close-up radar image of Venus, and Jim Zimbelman is still puzzling over what the pictures mean. He unrolls an oversize black-and-white glossy and smooths it out on a table. It shows a region of rugged plains in the Venusian northern hemisphere, a quadrangle that includes Kawelu Planitia and the western edge of Guinevere Planitia. The fantastic swirls and streaks, in every shade of gray, tell stories of volcanism, meteorite impact, and violent upheaval—that is, if you know how to interpret them. Zimbelman thinks the photo is "beautiful, almost disturbing" in the amount of information it contains.
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