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THE SOLAR SYSTEM
| SOL | MERCURY | VENUS | EARTH | METEORS | MOON | MARS | ASTEROIDS | JUPITER | SATURN | URANUS | NEPTUNE | PLUTO | COMETS |
(click to enlarge)
The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli, circa 1485.
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| SOL | MERCURY | VENUS | EARTH | METEORS | MOON | MARS | ASTEROIDS | JUPITER | SATURN | URANUS | NEPTUNE | PLUTO | COMETS |
In the first great battle of the gods, Saturn killed Uranus, and threw his genitals into the sea. The sea foamed, and from this foam arose the most beautiful, seductive goddess the world had ever seen. The Greeks called her Aphrodite, (from aphros, meaning foam). To the Romans, she was known as Venus.
Venus was the goddess of love, beauty, and sexuality, in deed as well as in name. Although married to the god Hephaestus, she entertained numerous lovers, both mortal and divine, including the likes of Adonis, Mercury, Neptune, and Mars, the god of war. More than a dozen children resulted from these affairs, including Phobos, Deimos, Harmonia, and Eros (Cupid). Legend says it was Venus who started the Trojan War by making Paris fall in love with Helen. And it was Venus who made Pygmalion's statue come to life.
Venus is the second planet from the Sun, and the closest planet to Earth. At its nearest, Venus is a mere 26 million miles away. It is also in many ways the most Earth-like planet in the solar system. It is almost the same size as Earth, and the same distance from the Sun, and the only other planet in the solar system (except for Saturn's moon, Titan) to possess a thick atmosphere. It seemed a natural assumption that Venus must be very similar to Earth and could quite conceivably be home to some form of life. But there was no way to find out for certain, because the clouds on Venus were so thick, they completely hid the surface of the planet from us. So we could only gaze up at those beautiful white clouds, and wonder if there was indeed a vast tropical paradise beneath them, teeming with life.
It wasn't until 1962 that we developed the technology to send a spacecraft to Venus to find out for sure, and when NASA's Mariner 2 spacecraft finally visited Venus, it discovered something shocking. Despite its closeness and apparent similarity to Earth, it was about as different as it could possibly be.
It seems the same greenhouse effect that makes life possible on Earth, has made life impossible on Venus. The greenhouse effect is the result of certain greenhouse gases in a planet's atmosphere absorbing infrared radiation, and keeping the planet warm, like a blanket. Earth's atmosphere has just the right amount of greenhouse gases, mostly in the form of carbon dioxide and water vapor, to keep the planet just the right temperature for life to thrive. It is, however, a delicate balance, and Venus is an example of this balance being upset. Widespread volcanic activity saturated the atmosphere of Venus with greenhouse gases, and the planet began to heat up. The increased temperature caused even more greenhouse gases to be released, creating a positive feedback loop that resulted in Venus having a surface temperature of 482 ° C (900 ° F) - hot enough to melt lead. And the story gets worse. The atmosphere on Venus has become so thick and heavy, the atmospheric pressure is 92 times that of Earth. The pressure on the surface of Venus is as crushing as the pressure one kilometer beneath the surface of the sea, on Earth. Citizens of Earth should take note of what happens to a planet when its atmosphere goes awry.
Like Mercury, Venus is between Earth and the Sun, so we see it go through phases, like the Moon, as the Sun hits it from different angles. But even though we only see part of Venus, it is still the brightest object in the night sky, except for the Moon, with an apparent magnitude of -4.4, because it is so close to us, and its cloud cover so highly reflective. Venus only appears in the morning, and the evening, but it does stray a little farther from the Sun than Mercury, hanging around in the morning sky for an hour or two before sunrise as the proverbial morning star, or setting an hour or two after the Sun, entertaining us as the famous evening star.
Venus rotates on its axis in the opposite (retrograde) direction of all the other planets in the solar system. On Venus the sun rises in the west, and sets in the east. But if you want to watch a sunset on Venus, you'd better pack a lunch, because the Sun moves very slowly across the Venusian sky, as the planet takes 243 Earth days to rotate once upon its axis. By that time, over a year has passed on Venus, as it takes only 225 Earth days to complete its orbit around the Sun.
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