The Solar System and Its Place in the Galaxy 9
FIGURE 2 The terrestrial planets: the heavily cratered surface of Mercury as photographed by
theMariner 10spacecraft in 1974 (top left); false color image of clouds on the night side of
Venus, backlit by the intense infrared radiation from the planet’s hot surface, as seen by the
GalileoNear-Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (NIMS) instrument in 1990 (top right); South
America and Antarctica as imaged by theGalileospacecraft during a gravity assist flyby of the
Earth in 1990 (bottom left); Valles Marineris, a 3000 km long canyon on Mars as photographed by
theViking 1orbiter in 1980 (bottom right).