VENUS ANIMATIONS                                       March 1993


The Venus animation is available in the following format:

   --  VENUS.FLI, an animation in FLI for PC and Unix

The following viewing software is available in the previous
directory:  Play version 0.80 for MS-DOS (PLAY.ZIP); xanim
(XANIM.Z) and xflick (XFLICK.Z) for Unix/X-Windows.
There is a program 'uncompre.exe' for MS-DOS
to uncompress the .Z files too.


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VENUS.FLI is an animated rotating globe of Venus based on surface
elevation data returned by the Magellan spacecraft.  In order to
view it you must have a Flick animation player such as PLAY79.ZIP
for DOS or xanim for Unix/X-Windows.

The animation is in FLI format and consists of 72 frames of
200x200 pixels every 5 degrees around the planet's equator. The
surface elevation is color coded so that the highest elevations
appear bright, while the lowest appear dark.  The colors
approximate colors actually seen on the surface by Soviet Venera
landers.  The frames were created by re-projecting the sinusoidal
browse image of surface topography from the GxDR CD-ROM of
Magellan data from its first 243-day mapping cycle at the planet. 
Some data from Magellan's second cycle are included in this
browse image to partly fill gap in cycle 1 coverage caused by
superior conjunction, or when Venus was behind the sun from
Earth's point of view.  The dark areas represent regions not yet
mapped at the time the CD-ROM was made.

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The altimetry CD-ROM, like other CD-ROMs from JPL missions, may be
obtained from:

  National Space Science Data Center
  Request Coordination Office
  Mail Code 633
  NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
  Greenbelt, Maryland 20771
  USA
  telephone +1 (301) 286-6695
  Internet electronic mail address:  request@nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov