The Night Sky's Wanderers - Venus

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Carnegie Institution

Beautiful Venus, the brightest object in the night sky after the moon, has been shrouded in mystery for millenia and has only recently begun to give up some of its secrets to science.

The atmosphere of Venus is filled with thick clouds that had kept scientists from viewing its surface. The image above from the Messenger spacecraft is typical of images of the planet taken using only visible light.

To overcome this problem, Venus has been imaged using radar and ultraviolet light. The image below, from the Magellan spacecraft, was created using radar and shows a false-color map of the planet surface, with red representing mountains and blue, valleys.

Credit: Magellan Spacecraft/Arecibo Radio Telescope/NASA

The only probes that have landed on Venus to date are the Soviet Venera 9 and 10 space crafts. They landed on Venus in October 1975 and sent back images, including these:


The Russian-made Venera probes were created to withstand the extraordinary atmospheric pressure on Venus (equal to 90 Earth atmospheres), extreme temperatures (around 850 degrees F) and a descent through the thick clouds in the upper atmosphere, which are made up of sulfuric acid.

Does that somehow sound familiar to you? A Russian-made probe designed for extreme conditions? It certainly sounded familiar to me, as a long-forgotten pop culture memory slowly made its way back to the light of day.

It was, in fact, the basis of a two-part episode of the The Six Million Dollar Man. "Death Probe" first aired in 1977 and featured a Russian probe that had been launched into space to study the surface of Venus. But somehow it returned to Earth and landed in the western U.S. Thinking it was on Venus, it began carrying out its mission, but when it encountered human resistance, it turned deadly. If it could withstand extreme pressures and temperature, how could it be stopped?


If you remember this episode, you also remember its strange yellow eye that zeroed in on any human standing in its way.


Creepy! But fortunately, Colonel Steve Austin was on the case and was finally able to destroy the formidable probe.

Portions of "Death Probe" are up on YouTube. People leaving comments vividly remember this episode, with some actually reporting nightmares. I had no idea it was based on actual space craft, but I also remember this episode very well. In many ways, it's emblematic of 1970s television - Russian bad guys, polyester clothing. But what really made it stand out was the idea of technology run amok. What humans had created could not be controlled and was now a deadly threat. Colonel Austin and his friends had to use both technology (his bionics) and their brainpower to bring an end to the rampage.

It was exciting viewing back then. To be honest, more than a few of my childhood evenings were spent in front of the television. But there were also trips to the planetarium and local observatory to get a first-hand look at the planets, unfiltered by thoughts of scary space probes.

If memories of action shows aren't enough of a planetary encounter for you, you're in luck. Check out the pre-dawn sky this weekend, where Venus and Jupiter will be in close proximity. You'll find them rising out of the east-southeast horizon a couple of hours before sunrise. Sunday morning, the crescent moon will join them to create a lovely show.