天文小科普金星（金星上的狄金森陨石坑）

This November 1996 image from Magellan shows Dickinson, an impact crater in the northeastern Atalanta region of Venus. The image is approximately 115 miles (185 kilometers) wide at the base and 43 miles (69 kilometers) in diameter. The crater is complex, characterized by a partial central ring and a floor flooded by radar-dark and radar-bright materials. Hummocky, rough-textured ejecta extend all around the crater, except to the west. The lack of ejecta to the west may indicate that the impactor that produced the crater was an oblique impact from the west. Extensive radar-bright flows that emanate from the crater's eastern walls may represent large volumes of impact melt, or they may be the result of volcanic material released from the subsurface during the cratering event.

Magellan was the first planetary spacecraft launched from a space shuttle. Now the agency is planning an even more adventurous mission–DAVINCI, which will be the first mission to study Venus using both spacecraft flybys and a descent probe.

这张1996年11月麦哲伦拍摄的照片显示了金星亚特兰大东北部的一个撞击坑——迪金森。这张照片底部宽约115英里（185公里），直径43英里（69公里）。这个陨石坑很复杂，其特征是有一个部分的中心环和一个被雷达暗物质和雷达亮物质淹没的地面。山丘状、粗糙纹理的喷出物遍布火山口周围，除了向西。西面没有喷出物可能表明，形成陨石坑的撞击物是来自西面的斜向撞击。从陨石坑东壁发出的大量雷达亮流可能代表大量的撞击熔体，也可能是在陨石坑形成过程中从地下释放出火山物质的结果。

麦哲伦是第一个从航天飞机上发射的行星航天器。现在，该机构正在计划一项更具冒险性的任务——达芬奇，这将是第一次利用航天器飞越和下降探测器研究金星。