The Venusian cloud tops during nearly a full orbit of ESA’s Venus Express around the planet. The inset shows the corresponding position and relative speed of Venus Express as it approaches from its furthest distance of 66 000 km above the south pole, swooping down to 250 km above the north pole.
The images were captured by the Venus Monitoring Camera on 7–8 January 2012 and are shown in false colour. The video was compiled using public data from the Venus Express data archive and was released as an ESA space science image of the week feature.