Brightness changes in Ganiki Chasma

The Ganiki Chasma rift zone in Atla Regio on Venus was imaged repeatedly to look for changes. The maps presented here show changes in relative brightness compared to the average background (red-orange indicates an increase, blue-purple a decrease) for a number of images acquired on each date. While some changes are due to variations in cloud brightness, one fixed surface hot spot is inferred, labelled ‘Object A’, which shows an increase in brightness between 22 and 24 June 2008 followed by a decrease.

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