The European Space Agency's Venus Express probe has 
hit the 500-day mark in its orbit of that hot planet, with more than a terabit of data now relayed to Earth, ESA scientists say.
Researchers are still in the process of analyzing the data, with several scientific papers in the works. But they've highlighted one early finding, noting that the planet's atmospheric structure has turned out to be extraordinarily dynamic, changing rapidly from day to day.
The series of pictures included here depicts a late-evening, or pre-midnight sector of the planet (one Venusian day is 243 Earth days), photographed successively over 8 orbits, or 10 earth days.
The probe itself continues to function well, experiencing only minor problems that have been easily corrected by ground-based controllers, the Agency said.
500 days at Venus, and the surprises keep coming [European Space Agency]
