Planet Of The Week: Venus

Venus is the closest planet to Earth, in more than one way. Still these two planet are far from twins when it comes to surface conditions. Venus has the most circular orbit around The Sun than any other planet in the Solar System, eccentricity being less than 0.01 (Earth has 0.0167 and Mercury 0.21) and avarage distance from the sun 108 208 930 km, closest distance to Earth just under 40 million kilometers. This makes Venus the third brightest celestial object in the sky, after the sun and moon. 

Venus orbits The Sun to same direction as the other planets, but what is really weird is that Venus rotates to opposite direction than other planets in the Solar System. This may have been caused by huge meteor collision or because the atmosphere and tidal forces slowed down rotation and eventually reversed it. Year in Venus lasts just under 225 Earth days and one day in Venus lasts 243 Earth days. So, you can see that one day lasts longer than one year on Venus. 

Caused by the low eccentricity and being the second planet from The Sun, Venus never rises very high above the horizon. It can be seen for two hours after sunset and before sunrise, thus called "evening star" or "morning star"  this caused the astronomers long ago, to mistake Venus being two stars. Babylonians first discovered Venus in 1581 BC.

Venus is called the Earth's sister planet because they are nearly the same sized, Venus being few hundred kilometers in diameter smaller an slightly less massive and both planets having nearly the same internal composition, cores, mantle and crust with dense atmosphere. That's the point where similarities end, Venus and Earth have dense atmosphere but the one on Venus is about 93 times more denser and pressure on the surface is 92 times that of Earth's, it is composed mainly of carbon dioxide and nitrogen. The whole planet is covered in thick sulfur dioxide and sulfuric acid cloud cover. Because of the high consentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, Venus has the most strongest greenhouse effect in the solar system, so strong that the surface temperature is over 460 °C all the time. You can imagine a planet that has the pressure equalent to 1km under water, super hot atmosphere and rain and clouds made of battery acid plus strong vulcanic activity. Not the place you would want to spend your holidays at.

This is real picture from the surface of Venus. Taken by Soviet Venera space probes (lasted about 30 seconds before being crushed by the atmosphere, all 16 Venera space probes)

The picture is taken from www.drl.de

Venus has a very weak magnetic field, this is due to the fact that the core is too hot to support convection that creates magnetism. However, Venus has some sort of a magnetic field, that is because solar wind interacts with the ionosphere creating weak induced magnetosphere. Venus is my favorite planet in the solar system, it is so full of danger and extreme conditions make it such a beauty with terrible character.