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This image shows early celestial observations of Venus. The top central drawing shows a sketch of Venus. The lack of topographic information shown comes from the thick greenhouse atmosphere of Venus, which creates an opaque veneer to the planet and surface temperatures in excess of 400 degrees celcius. A better image than this one would only become available in the 20th and 21st centuries with radar mapping. Below, a sketch of the phases of Venus as it makes its orbit of the sun are shown from the perspective of earth. Four phases are noted: plena, gibbosa, falcata, and silens et obscura. At the bottom a series of eight sketches attributed to possible astronomers are shown. Exactly what these sketches demonstrate is uncertain.
In all, this work is an interesting and uncommon 17th-century chart of the second closest planet to the sun.
