Venus is named after the Greek goddess of love and beauty "Aphrodite" and is often referred to as earth's "sister planet"
due to various similarities including a virtually identical physical size, mass and density and a similar orbital period
around the sun. One of the most dramatic exceptions and characteric features of the second planet from the Sun is the
thick, dense and poisonous cloud composed of lethal carbon dioxide and sulphuric acid and which totally covers Venus. A
consequence of this cloud is that heat cannot escape back into space (albedo=0.65!) and as a result the planet has become
one huge and massive "Greenhouse" characterized with temperatures which exceed 450° C (or 890° F) and are able to easily
melt lead. Similarly, devasting winds in the upper atmosphere approach 400 kph (250 mph).
Venus is different from most of the other planets in the solar system as it is characterized with a retrograde rotation
which leads to the Sun rising in the West and setting in the East. Furthermore, its rate of rotation (243 days) is the
slowest of any planet and slightly exceeds its rotation around the sun with its year being about 225 days. The surface is
characterized with a crushing pressure approximately 100 times that on earth with notable land features including the 30-km
wide and butterfly-shaped Aurelia Crater with minimal scattering of ejecta material due to the high surface pressure, the
6800-km long (!) Baltis Vallis which spans the lava plains of Venus and is interestingly 2.5 km wide from start to end,
the 2-km high and 200-km wide Volcano Sif Mons which is active with lava flows and, finally, Aphrodite Terra which spreads
about the equator and is characterized with both lava flows from the volcano Maat Mons and various distinct surface cracks.
Missions to Venus include Mariner 2 (1962), Venera 7 (1970), 8 and 9 (1975), and Magellan (1989). These probes have been
instrumental in sending back surface images and a variety of atmospheric and surface measurements related to chemical
composition, temperature, pressure, wind speeds and crater dimensions. For a complete and impressive list of satellite
missions to Venus, click here.
Body: Venus Mean Distance (A.U.): 0.289 Equatorial Diam (km): 12,104 Mass: 0.82 x Earth Volume: 0.86 x Earth Orbital Period: 224.701 days Number of Moons: 0 Orbital Eccentricity: 0.007 Orbital Inclination: 3.4° Albedo: 0.65 |
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Date: June 08, 2004 11:22:00 - 11:23:00 UT+3 Location: Athens, Greece Equipment: TeleVue Pronto Coronado SolarMax 60 Coronado BF10 Coronado T-Max Tuner Coronado Zero-Length Adapter Coronado CEMAX 2x Barlow Canon EOS 300d Exposures: 3 x 1/50 sec ISO 800 RAW Image Format 3072x2048 Image Size Manual Mode Software: Canon FileViewer V1.3.2 Photoshop V6 Processing: RAW to TIFF (16-bit) Conv Monochrome Mode Unsharp Masking Levels & Curves Layers & Masks Resampling JPG Compression |