just a reminder: Mariner 2, the first successful unmanned planetary probe was launched on this day 50 years ago. it flew by Venus returning data the next 14 December

And the beginning of a long comedown about the possibility of life on our planetary neighbors, when its infrared radiometer found for the first time that Venus was hot hot hot and not in a good way.

Well... lived that time. We were naive in thinking that a somwhat Earth sized planet would be Earthlike. I think the reality is far more rich. And we now know of habitats for life that were undreamed back then. We just had to grow up. And we still are ... look at the KEPLER worlds. Whole systems of planets crammed inside a Mercury sized orbit.

And with that will leave the life question alone. Nuff said per forum rules.

Thank you Mariner for starting that journey for us.

Craig

I also think it's worth mentioning that Mariner 2, also named Mariner-R, was the first successful flight of the Ranger spacecraft bus. It's a tribute to the overall design that it survived (barely) to a Venus encounter, something it was not exactly designed to do.

-the other Doug

Yeah.. agree with dvandorn.

AMAZING Mariner 2 succeeded! Tribute to the Mariner team!

Mariner 2's microwave scan of Venus, 14 December 1962. The three swaths show as three bumps (from left: nightside, terminator and dayside), the rest being space and noise. The limb darkening effect (first and third peaks lower than the second) proved that Venus' atmosphere was hot.

Truley amazing.

Thats a really cool header. Nicely done to the person who made it.

That would be UMSF's own Astro0, and it is indeed a beauty!!!

What's the source of this plot - a Science paper or a JPL report, or what? Nice to see the raw data like this.

it was printed in Scientific American and Sky & Telescope at the time. I also have the Science article but I don't remember seeing it there. I must check.
you can find the same data, with much more details (including scan geometry) here: http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1...000055.000.html