"How come we have not been visited by intellegent life if it does exist? Is it because they cannot travel faster than the speed of light? "
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Question
Why is Venus orange?
Venus is not orange; look at it in the sky and you will see that it is white with perhaps the slightest hint of yellow. What is orange is the color added to radar images of the surface, such as those obtained by the Magellan mission more than a decade ago. These radar images are spectacular, but I have always worried about the mode of presentation. The biggest problem is not the added orange color, but the fact that all of these images have greatly exaggerated vertical relief. Many of them have a factor 20 exaggeration, enough to make a low rounded hill look like a high mountain. This kind of presentation of radar data is useful to geologists, but it can be confusing to the public.
David Morrison
NAI Senior Scientist
July 22, 2009
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