Venus

Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. The planet is named after Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. After the Moon, it is the brightest natural object in the night sky, reaching an apparent magnitude of 4.6, bright enough to cast shadows. Because Venus is an inferior planet from Earth, it never appears to venture far from the Sun: its elongation reaches a maximum of 47.8. Venus reaches its maximum brightness shortly before sunrise or shortly after sunset, for which reason it has been known as the Morning Star or Evening Star. Venus is classified as a terrestrial planet and it is sometimes called Earth's "sister planet" due to the similar size, gravity, and bulk composition. Venus is covered with an opaque layer of highly reflective clouds of sulfuric acid, preventing its surface from being seen from space in visible light. Venus has the densest atmosphere of all the terrestrial planets in our solar system, consisting mostly of carbon dioxide. Venus has no carbon cycle to lock carbon back into rocks and surface features, nor does it seem to have any organic life to absorb it in biomass. A younger Venus is believed to have possessed Earth-like oceans,[11] but these evaporated as the temperature rose. Venus's surface is a dusty dry desertscape with many slab-like rocks, periodically refreshed by volcanism. The water has most likely dissociated, and, because of the lack of a planetary magnetic field, the hydrogen has been swept into interplanetary space by the solar wind.[12] The atmospheric pressure at the planet's surface is 92 times that of the Earth. The Venusian surface was a subject of speculation until some of its secrets were revealed by planetary science in the twentieth century. It was finally mapped in detail by Project Magellan in 199091. The ground shows evidence of extensive volcanism, and the sulfur in the atmosphere may indicate that there have been some recent eruptions.[13][14] However, the absence of evidence of lava flow accompanying any of the visible caldera remains an enigma. The planet has few impact craters, demonstrating that the surface is relatively young, approximately 300600 million years old.[15][16] There is no evidence for plate tectonics, possibly because its crust is too strong to subduct without water to make it less viscous. Instead, Venus may lose its internal heat in periodic massive resurfacing events.[15]
Atmosphere and climate

Venus has an extremely dense atmosphere, which consists mainly of carbon dioxide and a small amount of nitrogen. The atmospheric mass is 93 times that of Earth's atmosphere while the pressure at the planet's surface is about 92 times that at Earth's surfacea pressure equivalent to that at a depth of nearly 1 kilometer under Earth's oceans. The density at the surface is 65 kg/m (6.5% that of water). The CO2-rich atmosphere, along with thick clouds of sulfur dioxide, generates the strongest greenhouse effect in the Solar System, creating surface temperatures of over 460 C (860 F).[36] This makes the Venusian surface hotter than Mercury's which has a minimum surface temperature of 220 C and maximum surface temperature of 420 C,[37] even though Venus is nearly twice Mercury's distance from the Sun and thus receives only 25% of Mercury's solar irradiance. The surface of Venus is often said to resemble Hell.[38] Studies have suggested that several billion years ago the Venusian atmosphere was much more like Earth's than it is now, and that there were probably substantial quantities of liquid water on the surface, but a runaway greenhouse effect was caused by the evaporation of that original water, which generated a critical level of greenhouse gases in its atmosphere.[39] Thermal inertia and the transfer of heat by winds in the lower atmosphere mean that the temperature of the Venusian surface does not vary significantly between the night and day sides, despite the planet's extremely slow rotation. Winds at the surface are slow, moving at a few kilometers per hour, but because of the high density of the atmosphere at the Venusian surface, they exert a significant amount of force against obstructions, and transport dust and small stones across the surface. This alone would make it difficult for a human to walk through, even if the heat and lack of oxygen were not a problem.[40] Above the dense CO2 layer are thick clouds consisting mainly of sulfur dioxide and sulfuric acid droplets.[41][42] These clouds reflect about 60% of the sunlight that falls on them back into space, and prevent the direct observation of the Venusian surface in visible light. The permanent cloud cover means that although Venus is closer than Earth to the Sun, the Venusian surface is not as well lit. Strong 300 km/h winds at the cloud tops circle the planet about every four to five earth days.[43] Venusian winds move at up to 60 times the speed of the planet's rotation, while Earth's fastest winds are only 10% to 20% rotation speed.[44] The surface of Venus is effectively isothermal; it retains a constant temperature not only between day and night but between the equator and the poles.[1][45] The planet's minute axial tilt (less than three degrees, compared with 23 degrees for Earth), also minimizes seasonal temperature variation.[46] The only appreciable variation in temperature occurs with altitude. In 1995, the Magellan probe imaged a highly reflective substance at the tops of the highest mountain peaks which bore a strong resemblance to terrestrial snow. This substance arguably formed from a similar process to snow, albeit at a far higher temperature. Too volatile to condense on the surface, it rose in gas form to cooler higher elevations, where it then fell as precipitation. The identity of this substance is not known with certainty, but speculation has ranged from elemental tellurium to lead sulfide (galena).[47]

The clouds of Venus are capable of producing lightning much like the clouds on Earth.[48] The existence of lightning had been controversial since the first suspected bursts were detected by the Soviet Venera probes. However, in 200607 Venus Express clearly detected whistler mode waves, the signatures of lightning. Their intermittent appearance indicates a pattern associated with weather activity. The lightning rate is at least half of that on Earth.[48] In 2007 the Venus Express probe discovered that a huge double atmospheric vortex exists at the south pole of the planet.[49][50]

Orbit and rotation

Venus rotates about its axis in the opposite direction to most planets in the Solar System The orbital position and rotation of Venus shown at 10 Earth-day intervals from 0 to 250 days. The position of the point of the surface that was the antisolar point at day zero is indicated by a cross. As a consequence of its slow retrograde rotation, any given point on Venus has nearly 60 terrestrial days of continuous illumination and an equivalent period of darkness.

Venus orbits the Sun at an average distance of about 108 million kilometers (about 0.7 AU), and completes an orbit every 224.65 days. Although all planetary orbits are elliptical, Venus is the closest to circular, with an eccentricity of less than 0.01.[1] When Venus lies between the Earth and the Sun, a position known as "inferior conjunction", it makes the closest approach to Earth of any planet, lying at an average distance of 41 million km during inferior conjunction.[1] The planet reaches inferior conjunction every 584 days, on average.[1] Due to the decreasing eccentricity of Earth, the minimum distances will become greater. From the year 1 to 5383, there are 526 approaches less than 40 million km; then there are none for about 60,200 years.[57] During periods of greater eccentricity Venus can come as close as 38.2 million km.

If viewed from above the Sun's north pole, all the planets are orbiting in a counter-clockwise direction; but while most planets also rotate counter-clockwise, Venus rotates clockwise in "retrograde" rotation. The present rotation period of Venus represents an equilibrium state between gravitational tidal locking by the Sun that tends to slow the rotation rate, and an atmospheric tide created by the solar heating of the thick Venusian atmosphere. When it formed from the solar nebula, Venus may have begun with a different rotation period and obliquity, then migrated to the current state because of chaotic spin changes caused by planetary perturbations and tidal effects on its dense atmosphere. This change in the rotation period probably took place over the course of billions of years.[58][59] Venus rotates once every 243 Earth daysby far the slowest rotation period of any of the major planets. At the equator, the Venusian surface rotates at 6.5 km/h; on Earth, the rotation speed at the equator is about 1,670 km/h.[60] A Venusian sidereal day thus lasts longer than a Venusian year (243 versus 224.7 Earth days). However, because of the retrograde rotation, the length of a solar day on Venus is significantly shorter than the sidereal day. To an observer on the surface of

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Venus the time from one sunrise to the next would be 116.75 Earth days (making the Venusian solar day shorter than Mercury's 176 Earth days).[10] Additionally, the Sun would appear to rise in the west and set in the east. As a result of Venus's relatively long solar day, one Venus year is about 1.92 Venus days long.[10] A curious aspect of the Venusian orbit and rotation periods is that the 584-day average interval between successive close approaches to the Earth is almost exactly equal to five Venusian solar days. Whether this relationship arose by chance or is the result of tidal locking with the Earth, is unknown.[61] Venus currently has no natural satellite,[62] though the asteroid 2002 VE68 presently maintains a quasi-orbital relationship with it.[63] In the 17th century, Giovanni Cassini reported to have seen a moon orbiting Venus, which was named Neith, after the Egyptian goddess. Over the following 200 years there were numerous reported sightings. Ultimately, it was determined that most of them could be explained by stars which had been in the vicinity of Venus. According to Alex Alemi and David Stevenson of the California Institute of Technology, their 2006 study of models of the early Solar System shows that it is very likely that, billions of years ago, Venus had at least one moon, created by a huge impact event.[64][65] About 10 million years later, according to the study, another impact reversed the planet's spin direction. This caused the Venusian moon gradually to spiral inward[66] until it collided and merged with Venus. If later impacts created moons, those also were absorbed in the same manner. An alternative explanation for the lack of satellites is the effect of strong solar tides, which can destabilize large satellites orbiting the inner terrestrial planets.[62]