Images and topographic relief at the north pole of Venus

The analysis of unique coverage of the north pole of Venus using a subset of 13 images from a total of about 775 synthetic aperture radar orbits during cycle 1 of the Magellan mission is reported. Images at 13 distinctly different azimuths are reported that range over 360 deg in longitude and that show the topographic relief at vastly different imaging geometries at intervals of about 20 deg. A pair of intersecting or crossing orbits is used to assess the topographic relief with stereo radargrammetric techniques, and to refine this assessment using a multiimage clinometric approach. It is shown that the pole is located in accentuated topography with elevation differences in the range of no more than 1 km. It is concluded that pinpointing the location of the pole from the overlapping images and standard mission data is accurate to within about 100 pixels or 8 km (RMS).