I've edited this page as to improve upon it's truth or consequences, which thus far doesn't look all that great for the likes of Einstein nor Plank, not to mention our NASA.

Getting those new and improved photons to/from Venus is easier said than done, although it seems the folks of Venus have more than satisfied their method of photon delivery, as for creating those horrific illuminations of "Ashen Lights" as noticed by hundreds of folks outside of our NASA (notarized by C.T. Russell and J.L. Phillips) and even previously recorded by those nice British folks of their British Astronomical Association(BAA), as for their fine job of photographing what could be substantially artificial illumination spots, and clearly imaged by the sorts of sufficiently intelligent astronomers that seem to have operated outside the NASA/NSA/DoD box.

Unfortunately Einstein's "speed of light" as supposedly a constant isn't so constant, and thereby Planks constant of 6.626e-34 J/Hz for identifying the numbers of photons isn't hardly worth squat anymore, though none the less we'll utilize what we have to work with, as for even if it's worth somewhat less than toilet paper because, as you should know, in a pinch almost anything will do as toilet paper.

Of course the lumens per watt or vise versa have allways been based upon a very human biological determination, as many folks have elected to utilize 683 lumen/watt as a basis, whereas at other wavelengths such as 507 nm is where our eyes and of a few brain cells running amuck perceive 1700 lumen/watt, or supposedly that's .588 mw/lumen, and as we go towards the near UV spectrum (such as the 400~450 nm) is where our human perceptions of said photons heads into the nearest space toilet, and of much that's below 400 nm it's entirely flushed away, while a decent sort of Venus lizard folk that's nocturnal is perhaps not only at their peak of optical performance at perhaps 400 nm, but of accomplishing another magnitude 5 (X100) factor at better photon detection at that.

The thrust of this document and of future updates is to help myself and others determine and/or outline the sort of background illumination or photonic noise associated with earthshine reaching Venus, and thus impacting efforts of an artificial signal being detected by whomever is in the dark. My general objective was for assuming that we'd require at least a 10% addition of photons to the existing level of earthshine in order to be noticed and thereby detected, and of those signal photons becoming more so detectable if the spectrum transmitted were not of the same as the bulk of earthshine (450~750 nm), and perhaps also of those 400~450 nm photons being somewhat better at penetrating those clouds couldn't hurt as the extended Venus season of nighttime creates windows of less cloud density that can amount to as much as a 50:1 aspect ratio, whereas the season of daytime offers ratios that have been recorded as 25:1. Recent IR imaging of Venus has helped greatly in identifying those windows, whereas the best capability of a laser targeted zone is going to likely exceed 700 km, which might fall within one of those atmospheric window opportunities.

Since honest folks are nearly always placed on the "need to know" basis, if not excluded entirely, and more often than not depending upon the level of their being snookered, are either lied to or at least given sufficient disinformation so that the outcome of their perception is adequately distorted as to suit the mainstream status quo. In spite of that being the case, here I am just plugging away at my discovering certain things and learning loads of nifty stuff from others in spite of my being on their official "need to know" basis.

Terrific photos of Earthshine upon the moon.
http://www.astropix.com/HTML/G_MOON/MOON_VEN.HTM
http://www.abmedia.com/astro/planets/earthshine.html
http://home.gwi.net/~aljordan/astro/earthShine.html
http://www.rc-astro.com/solar_system/moon/earthshine.html
http://www.rc-astro.com/solar_system/moon/moonbees.html
http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/Projects/Clementine/images/orien_586x384.jpeg
http://photographytips.com/page.cfm/5560

NOTE: Earth's albedo fluctuates by as much as 20%/year due to environmental variations and thus mostly as pertaining to the percentage of cloud cover.

From: Richard Bullock
"Earth itself would have a magnitude of -6.7 as viewed from Venus at this opposition. In a telescope, it would have a brightness of a mag 2 star in every square arcsecond of its 64 arcsec diameter disc. By Earthshine, Venus would shine at around 13th magnitude, with every square arcsecond of its disc "shining" as a 21st magnitude star. Earth at opposition currently would give a total illumination of around 1.5 billion Watts (1.5 GW) over the total surface of Venus."

Naturally our Mr. Paul Schlyter as well as for the likes of SETI remain thoroughly stuck on radio, even though not 0.0001% of life as we've known it to exist on Earth utilizes radio, nor is it all that likely of other species surviving upon the likes of Venus would have remained that pathetically dumbfounded, as if so they'd all be long dead. At least technologically there's nothing much about radio that's worth squat to folks having to make a tough go of it on Venus. Of course, in my infinate village idiot way of thinking about that horrific amount of earthshine illumination to overcome as previously stipulated by Richard Bullock, that being worth 1.5e9 watts per the entire nighttime side of Venus (if that were merely of the half sphere including those nighttime clouds facing Earth) we're talking 2.42e14 m2 = 6.2e-6/m2, that's 6.2 uw or 0.0062 mw/m2 of what's mostly 450+ nm. Taking but 10% of that which might represent the 400~450 nm and we're down to 0.62e-6 w/m2, and of course that's per the source illumance of looking directly back towards Earth, of what's not the same terms as comparing earthshine upon our moon, as for the portion of earthshine reflecting off the surface of them clouds would obviously be somewhat less, perhaps more like 75% less of those 400~450 nm photons.

This earthshine and related spectrums of our earthshine needs a little more polish, lots more of those reference numbers from various experts that perhaps think they know all there is to know, which might in fact turn out being all there is to know. From such vast knowledge we should have been capable of specifying not only how much is required as to deliver a packet but, of how much energy these Venus lizard folks are having to utilize in order to get the attention of the utmost arrogant, dumb and dumber other planet in the entire universe.

Of course, if you're one of those "all knowing" sorts insisting that Earth's humanity is all there is, what can I or anyone other have to say?

BTW; it is in fact humanly hot and nasty on Venus, though somewhat less hot and less nasty within their season of nighttime and even somewhat manageable at good elevations, especially since there's no apparent shortage of energy, and there's certainly plenty of surface basalt and silica to go around, plus whatever is within the planet having minerals plus other worth of energy to utilize. Of course, having a massive rigid airship that could function as an astronomy platform is only what those pesky laws of physics say is possible, not to mention that there's a darn good image of what could be just that. Unfortunately, our NASA is still too busy looking for all of those WMD, and otherwise cloaking on behalf of NSA/DoD cold-war agendas.

Some other interesting Earth/moon, ASHEN LIGHT and magnitude related data:
http://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/personnel/russell/papers/ashen/ http://www.fact-index.com/m/mo/moon.html
http://www.astro-tom.com/technical_data/magnitude_scale.htm
http://uanews.opi.arizona.edu/cgi-bin/WebObjects/UANews.woa/wa/SRStoryDetails?ArticleID=4711
http://graucho.opi.arizona.edu/graphix/images/shinespectrum.jpg
http://www.obspm.fr/actual/nouvelle/jan02/schneider.en.shtml

The Occurrence of Ashen Light:
"Many dismiss Ashen Light as an artifact and do not believe that Ashen Light arises on Venus. The fact that many totally independent observers have observed the Ashen Light simultaneously, that some of these simultaneous observations were made by professional astronomers and that the observations persist today with improved instrumentation suggest the phenomenon is real /2,3,4/. Another piece of evidence for the reality of the Ashen Light phenomenon is the fact that its occurrence correlates with a phenomenon that should not affect seeing conditions and of which the observers should have been completely unaware. Ashen Light at Venus' inferior conjunction is more prevalent when geomagnetic activity is high /2/. Levine interpreted this fact to imply that energetic particles caused nighttime aurora on Venus. However, increased energetic particle flux could also lead to increased electrification of the atmosphere and hence greater lightning activity."

"Williams at al. (20) have dismissed the notion that lightning can be the source of Ashen Light because the Ashen Light would have to have an intensity of about 10-1 W m-2 to be seen. If an individual flash had a power of 109 W as Williams et al. assume then to maintain Ashen Light over about 107 km2 on the nightside of Venus requires about 1012 W which in turn requires 103 intra-cloud flashes per second. This power in lightning is similar to that observed on Earth but the flash rate is 10 times as high because a lower energy per flash has been assumed than is typical for Earth (ground to cloud) discharges. on the other hand, intra-cloud discharges on Earth, while weaker, occur more frequently /21/. We might expect such a compensation on Venus also."

I'll totally agree that such a sustained form and patterns of energy release that's capable of tightly focusing its energy and thereby delivering photons through to the top of such clouds, and of having such photons to spare that we'd notice, this isn't a natural sort of event by way of any known or even conjectured laws of physics. The notion of a terawatt requirment of energy being released, much less sustained, simply isn't necessary if there's some artificial intent as to focus such photons. Although, since there's absolutely no limitation as to artificially obtaining nearly any amount of energy from just the vertical atmospheric pressure differential of 4+bar/km, and there's been a darn good image of a parabolic like item having a central tower is suggesting upon the rather obvious to my way of thinking. According to the likes of C.T. Russell and J.L. Phillips, this entirely one-of-a-kind source of illumination has been noticed for some 30 decades, yet our swift NASA and their obviously ulterior motived souls haven't given this proper notice nor hardly s cent worth of research, even though it's what's happening closest and most accessable next to our moon, of which apparently they don't want folks taking too close of any serious look-see at either of these two items.

"SCIENTISTS WATCH MOON TO MONITOR EARTH'S CLIMATE"
"In May 1 issue of the journal "Geophysical Research Letters," published by the American Geophysical Union, a team of scientists from the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) and the California Institute of Technology report that Earth's albedo, the fraction of sunlight it reflects, nowaverages 0.297."

This "0.297" albedo seems to be indicating that mother Earth is absorbing solar energy rather than reflecting it, which I believe this is a truly bad sign post if there ever was for global pollution and subsequent global warming, however the notion of earthshine becoming further limited is a good sort of consideration as for reducing the level of photonic background noise of which a transmitted signal upon the nighttime season of Venus needs to overcome.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2002/12apr_earthshine.htm
"The view from the Moon itself must be stunning. When the Moon is new, or nearly so, Earth is a dazzling, fully-lit orb in lunar skies. Blue and green and swirling white, our planet would appear four times wider than the Sun and 50 times brighter than a Full Moon."

"Clouds dominate the "shininess" of our planet, adds Goode. "They reflect about 50% of the sunlight that hits them -- more than oceans (10%) or land (10% to 25%). Only snow and ice reflect more (40% to 90%) than clouds do, but snowy areas tend to be cloud covered anyway.""

1. As offered by Paul Schlyter (pausch@electra.saaf.se); How bright does the full Earth shine, as seen from the Moon?  V(1,0)
   for the Earth is 4.07 magnitudes brighter than V(1,0) for the Moon.
   The Moon shines at mag -12.73 when full - thus the Earth shines at
   -12.73 - 4.07 = -16.80 when full, as seen from the Moon (i.e. when
   the Moon is "new").

2. How bright does Earthshine shine?  When illuminated by the Sun
   (mag -26.74), the full Moon shines at -12.73.  Earthshine is really
   a "full moon illuminated by the Earth".  Since the full Earth, as
   seen from the Moon, shines -16.80 - -26.74 = 9.94 magnitudes fainter
   than the Sun, likewise the Earthshine ought to shine 9.94 magnitudes
   fainter than the full Moon.  Thus Earthshine shines at -12.73 + 9,94
   = -2.79

Since I'm one of those village idiots easily confused or perhaps snookered by all the various conversions, I've therefore elected upon taking the above 4.07 magnitude as representing the apparent difference between earthshine and of moonshine, and by way of subtracting one full magnitude that corresponds to a shift of roughly 2.5 times (the fifth root of 100 is about 2.5118). A difference of 2 magnitudes being equal to a 2.5118 times 2.5118 = 6.309 fold difference in brightness, and so on.

However, as for just contemplating the magnitude as a ratio difference of 4 = 100/2.5118 = 39.812:1

Thereby an earthshine/moonshine magnitude ratio of 4.07:1 = roughly 40+ times more earthshine illumination as received upon the moon than of moonshine received here on Earth, and there's even more such earthshine if mother Earth is having one of those bad cloud sort of days, which might even get us up to the 50:1 ratio as the before mentioned NASA report stipulated. Oddly those NASA/Apollo rusemasters never once corrected my previous misunderstanding of earthshine being worth 16 times more than moonshine, and gee whiz folks, I can't imagine why they didn't bother as to jump all over that significant error. Maybe is was because a 50:1 ration would have mad my argument all that more so rational as to accommodating those Apollo mission under the safety cloak of earthshine, that which would have cut their radiation impact by at least 90%, and greatly simplified their surviving within those moon suits as thermally so much better off as opposed to the additional energy and technical complications of their having to deal with a 500°F differential, and of course they could have easily signaled Earth from the earthshine surface of the moon using a hand-held photo-strobe, and otherwise imaged all sorts of stars, especially of Sirius, and the sheer vibrance of Venus to boot.

Upon Earth, total moonshine illumination should definitely be over 0.25 lux (< 0.275 lux or lumen).
(As for looking at the full moon, that's something all together different than what the moon is illuminating upon, as for the apparent illuminance of the full Moon = 6000 nits or 6000 candelas)

0.25 * 40 = 10 lumen/m2

1 lux or lumen = 0.001496 watt/m2

Thereby earthshine upon the moon of 10 lumen * 1.496e-3 = 14.96 mw/m2

I don't mean to be nitpicking at the little stuff but, the reported (though not by way of anything Apollo) visual size of Earth having to be 4 times that of the sun and offering a 50:1 brighter aspect of earthshine as specified by NASA is hardly insignificant, and otherwise of the moon receiving at least 15 mw/m2 of earthshine is also quite a nice bit of illumination for anyone working the lunar surface, as for even 40+ times greater than moonshine upon Earth is obviously way more than sufficient to read a newspaper, as my relatively poor eyesight has managed a newspaper with merely moonshine. Perhaps upon the moon our astronauts could save their night vision by having to wear an extra tinted sun visor in order to cut the horrific earthshine intensity down to a dull roar, especially of ever having to look directly at the source of earthshine being as great as 300,000 nit.

If we applied for the added distance of Venus being 110 times further away than Earth is from the moon, whereas the earthshine upon them Venus nighttime clouds should become 12,100 times less illumination.

8.2644e-5 * 15e-3 = 123.967e-8 or 1.24e-6 w/m2 or 1.24 uw reaching the cloud tops as 450~750 nm earthshine.

Of the 400~450 nm worth of natural Earthshine shouldn't be 10% of that, making the photonic background influx worth all of 0.124 mw/m2

If given a cloud opacity index value of merely 10%, that's still exposing whomever to 0.124e-6 w/m2 of the 450~750 nm as arriving upon the surface as earthshine, and perhaps 0.0124e-6 w/m2 to the portion of earthshing within the 400~450 nm spectrum.

If our moon shine upon Earths' average surface albedo is suggesting 0.25 lux or 0.375 mw/m2, then obviously the illuminated environment upon the Venus nighttime cloud surface is 3.242e3 times less, and as surely humanly pitch black below, although to a good nocturnal having that magnitude 5 advantage over that of our human sight, and most likely receptive to the near UV of their peak visual sensitivity being perhaps 400 nm, whereas that 0.0124 uw/m2 is quite usable.

Even if we limited our 1 watt = 1.5e18 photons (the absolute minimum)

0.0124e-6 * 1.5e18 = 18.6e9 photons/m2 which should be more than sufficiently illuminating, with photons to spare. So, obviously the folks informing me that any artificial efforts at delivering a packet of worthy photons toward Venus is a waste of time were then and still are simply chuck full of it, especially if we started out with an exit divergence of 0.5 milliradian and made that of a 400~450 nm spectrum and of perhaps 1 kw should do the trick of illuminating 38.5e10 m2 = 2.597e-9 w/m2, as opposed to the 12.4e-9 of earthshine, as that's nearly a +21% factor of additional photons that are of a slightly different spectrum of color than the bulk of earthshine.

Delivering a full 1% or 1 MW of our ABL = 2.597e-6 w/m2, which amounts to nearly a 21 fold brighter dosage than the 450~750 nm component of earthshine, and there's easily a 210 fold improved over the 400~450 nm component of earthshine, not to mention our advantage of further refining by selecting a spectrum that's even somewhat more so different than earthshine, as well as for those applying the sorts of photons that are more cloud penetrating to boot, plus there's more than a likely chance of our discovering a window of nearly 25% opacity as for accommodating something within the 400~450 nm that's targeting into their season of nighttime shouldn't be so easily discounted, unless you happen to know otherwise, in which case you might care to share that knowledge rather than continually hoarding such expertise for some rainy day.

Such as, you might care to suggest upon what specific spectrum would yield the most bang or photons for the almighty buck/euro, or you could say absolutely nothing and thereby prove that I'm more right than not about the perverted nature of the mainstream astronomy status quo being and doing exacting what I've come into knowledge of, and upon which I'm more than willing as to share my opinions with the world.

Another notion arises from the grave; since we can pretty much toss out the Einstein constant of light speed, that if in fact light travels somewhat faster in free space, especially if there should be a zone of merely an individual atom/m3, and significantly slower otherwise, then perhaps a good number of interesting astronomical items are not nearly as far off as we've perceived, and this is of good news if we're ever planning upon going to such places, or otherwise being so much easier for ET visitors coming to Earth, such as from the likes of Sirius/abc, as arriving to visit those nice Dogon friends of theirs.

I'm certainly open for better math, and for taking into account that earthshine with respect to the moon isn't offered as any crisp pinpoint of light source (more of a soft flood-lamp affect) as it would be nearly a point-source of illumination for that of Venus, thus there should become yet another correction factor that I believe along with our recent pollution cutting our albedo down to 0.3 could further diminish the effective earthshine potential for the likes of Venus, as opposed to our moon, or is it the other way around?