Classified as a terrestrial planet, it is sometimes called Earth’s “sister planet”, because they are similar in size, gravity, and bulk composition. Venus is covered with an opaque layer of highly reflective clouds of sulfuric acid, preventing its surface from being seen from space in visible light; this was a subject of great speculation until some of its secrets were revealed by planetary science in the twentieth century. Venus has the densest atmosphere of all the terrestrial planets, consisting mostly of carbon dioxide, as it has no carbon cycle to lock carbon back into rocks and surface features, nor organic life to absorb it in biomass. It has become so hot that the earth-like oceans that the young Venus is believed to have possessed have totally evaporated, leaving a dusty dry desertscape with many slab-like rocks.

Compose this kind of images is not easy and requires lot of efforts. For example check foto 12 composition job:

Magellan synthetic aperture radar mosaics from the three eight-month cycles of Magellan radar mapping are mapped onto a computer-simulated globe to create this image. Magellan obtained coverage of 98 percent of the surface of Venus. Remaining gaps are filled with data from previous missions, (the Soviet Venera 15 and 16 radar and Pioneer Venus Orbiter altimetry) and data from Earth-based radar observations from the Arecibo radio telescope. Simulated color is used to enhance small-scale structures. The simulated hues are based on color images recorded by the Venera 13 and 14 landing craft. Maxwell Montes, the planet’s highest mountain at 11 kilometers (6.6 miles) above the average elevation, is the bright feature in the lower center of the image. Other terrain types visible in this image include tessera, ridge belts, lava flows, impact craters and coronae. The image was produced by the Solar System Visualization Project and the Magellan Science team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Multimission Image Processing Laboratory. The Magellan mission is managed by JPL for NASA’s Office of Space Science.

Or foto 13 composition job:

The Magellan spacecraft imaged more than 98% of Venus at a resolution of about 100 meters; the effective resolution of this image is about 3 km. A mosaic of the Magellan images (most with illumination from the west) forms the image base. Gaps in the Magellan coverage were filled with images from the Earth-based Arecibo radar in a region centered roughly on 0 degree latitude and longitude, and with a neutral tone elsewhere (primarily near the south pole). The composite image was processed to improve contrast and to emphasize small features, and was color-coded to represent elevation. Gaps in the elevation data from the Magellan radar altimeter were filled with altimetry from the Venera spacecraft and the U.S. Pioneer Venus missions. An orthographic projection was used, simulating a distant view of one hemisphere of the planet. The Magellan mission was managed for NASA by Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, CA. Data processed by JPL, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, and the U.S. Geological Survey, Flagstaff, AZ.