Venus got its name from the Roman Goddess of Love and Beauty and to early observers its welcoming bright light and warm colours would have made it seem like a tranquil planet.
In 2004 NASA’s TRACE (Transition Region and Coronal Explorer) satellite took this image of Venus’s transit across the face of the Sun. This event happens about two times every hundred years.
When viewing planetary transits or any solar event it is important to view it through a pin hole camera, or other specially designed devices, and not with the naked eye as the light can damage the retina.
The brightest planet in our night sky due to its close proximity to Earth and the thick cloud which reflects the Sun’s light superbly. This made spotting the planet very easy for early astronomers but the thick cloud has proved difficult in detecting the surface of Venus.
Only in modern times using special equipment mounted on space craft have we been able to look deeper into the planet’s make up and further measurements and discoveries have been possible by the use of probes actually landing on the surface.
Venus is a very inhospitable place for life as we know it. The atmosphere is made up of thick carbon dioxide which holds in the heat from the Sun helping temperatures reach over 470°C (878°F or 743°K). The thick atmosphere also is 90 times that of Earth and contains clouds which contain droplets of Sulphuric Acid as opposed to the water we are used to. In 2007 evidence of lightning was discovered but this atmospheric lightning was not being caused by water clouds as on Earth, Jupiter and Saturn but being caused by the clouds of sulphuric acid. Even probes sent to Venus are unable to survive for long in this harsh environment.
Image credit NASA
Using cloud-penetrating radar NASA’s Magellan probe managed to look through the atmosphere to discover the real face of Venus and map the surface.
The surface of Venus is littered with large volcanoes and it is believed that the entire surface was ‘renewed’ by volcanic activity about 500 million years ago. It has got large highland areas near the Polar Regions and its highest mountain ‘Maxwell Montes’ is about the size of our Everest. The acidic conditions of the atmosphere cause constant erosion of the surface rock and the fast winds cause sand dunes to form and change much like our deserts.
Venus is one of the few planets that have a retrograde spin (clockwise from the most northern point) meaning that the Sun appears to rise in the west and set in the east.
Although Venus has a large iron core its spin is too slow to create a magnetosphere such as ours leaving little or no protection from solar storms. Its thick atmosphere does however give Venus protection from small meteorites as they break up easily in its atmosphere. Proof of this is the craters on the surface which are very large, meaning only the largest of meteors make it through.
Moons |
0 |
Rings |
0 |
Orbit period |
224.7 Earth Days |
Rotation Period |
243 Earth Days (retrograde) |
Equatorial Period |
6,052 km (3,760 miles) |
Overall Density |
5.42 g/cm3 |
Mass (Earth = 1) |
0.815 |
Gravity (Earth = 1) |
0.91 |
Minimum Temperature |
|
Maximum Temperature |
470°C (878°F or 743°K) |
