And it looks so pretty in the photographs...

Venus, the second planet from the Sun, bakes under twice as much solar radiation as Earth, often reaching temperatures of 895 degrees Fahrenheit (480 degrees Celsius).  That, combined with the planet's sulfuric acid atmosphere and a human-crushing surface pressure 95 times greater than Earth's, makes it a lot less hospitable for humans than, say, Mars. Another uncomfortable Venusian feature is the thick cloud cover that, unlike Earth, rotates around Venus much faster than the planet itself -- about once every four days.

Yet below that tumultuous atmosphere is a planet that looks a lot like a very young Earth. Beneath the clouds we see a planet that is evolving much in the same way as our home planet did. With valleys and mountans -- including Maxwell Montes, a mountain taller than Mount Everest -- and giant eruptions that shape the surface of the planet, Venus is still growing up.

The Magellan spacecraft imaged more than 98% of Venus during its four year mission before scientists sent it crashing into the planet's atmosphere in October, 1994. A mosaic of the Magellan images forms the base of this image with gaps in the coverage filled with images from the Earth-based Arecibo radar.

The composite image was processed to improve contrast and to emphasize small features, and was color-coded to represent elevation. Gaps in the elevation data from the Magellan radar altimeter were filled with altimetry from the Venera spacecraft and the U.S. Pioneer Venus missions.

The Magellan mission was managed for NASA by Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, CA. Data processed by JPL, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, and the U.S. Geological Survey, Flagstaff, AZ.