VENUS:EARTH'S CLOUDY TWIN

Venus is very similar to Earth when it comes to size and mass. If Venus wasn't so cloudy, it would actually come very close to looking like Earth- or as some would refer to it as Earth's sister planet. Humans definitely could not survive on Venus because it is the hottest planet being so close to the sun. no type of life form has been discovered on Venus.After the sun and the moon, Venus is the brightest when visible. Venera9, including more than twenty other spacecrafts have visited and landed on this cloudy planet in which they used radar to map the surface of the planet. The picture above was taken by the Galileo spacecraft presently in orbit around Jupiter. Myterious bursts of radio waves and several other things about Venus remain unknown about Venus.

Venus was once known as the brilliant morning and evening star depending on if it settled in the west and rose in the east. Along with several other planets, Venus is best shown in October. In this particular month, Venus appears in early evening near Mars (the red planet), and Antares(Mars's red giant rival above the southwestern horizon). Venus is seen throughout the year as a bright morning or evening star because of the fact that its apparant position near the sun prevents it from staying far from it. Venus is second in distance from the sun. Just like the moon, Venus has phases. The next two intervals will be in 2004 and 2012.

The surface temperature on Venus is about 459 degrees Celsius and the surface pressure is about 96 bars compared to the Earth which is 1 bar. The atmosphere consists mostly of carbon dioxide(CO2) and the cloud particles are mostly concentrated with sulfuric acid. Venus has no detctable magnetic field. It is not really strange that about 97% of the atmosphere is CO2 because in actuallity, the Earth's crust contains about the same amount in the form of limestone. The other 3% in the atmosphere is nitrogen (N2), but the Earth's atmosphere is about 78% nitrogen.

Seeing as how Venus is close to the sun, there is rarely any water or water vapor. Any oceans that could have been on Venus evaporated because of the greenhouse effect. There possibly was no water on this planet in the first place.

There is a pale yellow impurity which gives Venus's clouds their color. There are also indications of volcanism on the planet by the variation in the sulfur dioxide content. The weather features and cloud pattern show information about wind motion in the atmosphere. These winds cover Venus completely but the upperlevel winds circle the planet at 360 km an hour. Near the surface of the planet is almost stagnant. The clouds act as "sealer" of the planet's greenhouse effect. If it was not there the temperature of Venus would be lower. The heat is a form of longwave radiation.

About 60% of Venus's surface is made up of gently rolling land varying in height of about 1000 meters, and about 16% lies below the plains. The remaining percent lies a couple thousand meters higher than the plains. A third of the higher regions are made up of mountainous regions ranging about 10 km above plains (nearly the height of Mt. Everest).

This page was written by Nicole Ricca in the astronomy class at BCC/Broward County, July 1998