Revealing new Venus image out of this world

EUROPEAN scientists yesterday released the first photos of Venus’s south pole from the orbiting Venus Express spacecraft - revealing a swirling twist of cloud that closely resembles cloud formations around the more familiar north pole

The image, taken from a distance of roughly 124,000 miles and released by the European Space Agency (ESA), shows pale yellow clouds ribbed with darker spirals and a dark vortex.

“We can see there is a twister here that is similar to that which we know from the north pole,” said Horst Uwe Keller, who leads the team operating the craft’s wide-angle, multichannel camera - one of seven instruments aboard the Venus Express.