Although it's our closest neighbor, we haven't known much about Venus until recently. Ancient civilizations however, were keeping track of it long ago. Each one had unique beliefs.
A planet with many names, we know it as Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. The Greeks believed that it was two separate entities. Hesperus when they saw it in the morning, Phosphorus when they saw it in the evening. Mayans thought Venus was the god Kukulkan. Aztecs believed it was Quetzalcoatl. You have to admire them for the interesting explanations they came up with to describe this entity in their night sky!
Venus is an inner planet, the second from the sun. It's also the second brightest object in the night sky after the moon. Although you can observe it without any aids, even with a telescope you can't see very much as it is covered in thick clouds, which reflect light back. The only way to see past the clouds is with a radar system.
In some ways Venus is similar to Earth in that they are almost the same size, have almost the almost the same density and gravity. They both have thick atmospheres made of gases. However it does not have a moon, rings, or a magnetic field. Venus has a similar composition to the Earth as well.
Astronomers and scientists were curious to know what was beneath the clouds. Two spacecraft went up on the space shuttle Atlantis to find more about the surface, clouds, and other data. In May of 1989 on the STS-30 mission, Magellan went up to orbit around Venus. Galileo followed on the STS-34 mission in October of 1989. Although Galileo's main objective was to probe Jupiter, it did a flyby of Venus to take infrared pictures of the clouds in February of 1990. Magellan was named after the 16th century explorer Ferdinand Magellan. Even though Magellan was launched first it did not go into orbit around Venus until August of 1990. Magellan mapped the surface using a SAR, Synthetic Aperture Radar.
From these and other probes and spacecraft we have learned a number of things. The surface is dusty, arid, and mostly flat with some deep valleys. It is very hot, with a surface temperature of 860°. This makes Venus the hottest planet in the solar system! Since the atmosphere is made of mostly carbon dioxide, Venus is uninhabitable. The barometric pressure is almost 100 times that of the Earth. To give you an idea of how much that is, the probes that landed on the surface would fail because of the high pressure. It sometimes rains on Venus, sulfuric acid and water vapor. Because of the high temperatures and dense cloud cover, Venus has what some scientists call "the greenhouse effect gone wild". What that means is heat from the sun can get in, but cannot escape. Put very simply, the clouds hold all the heat in.
We have learned a lot about Venus in the last few centuries. We still watch in the evening or in the morning depending on what phase it is in. But somehow it still seems mysterious the way it hides behind its clouds.
A planet with many names, we know it as Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. The Greeks believed that it was two separate entities. Hesperus when they saw it in the morning, Phosphorus when they saw it in the evening. Mayans thought Venus was the god Kukulkan. Aztecs believed it was Quetzalcoatl. You have to admire them for the interesting explanations they came up with to describe this entity in their night sky!
Venus is an inner planet, the second from the sun. It's also the second brightest object in the night sky after the moon. Although you can observe it without any aids, even with a telescope you can't see very much as it is covered in thick clouds, which reflect light back. The only way to see past the clouds is with a radar system.
In some ways Venus is similar to Earth in that they are almost the same size, have almost the almost the same density and gravity. They both have thick atmospheres made of gases. However it does not have a moon, rings, or a magnetic field. Venus has a similar composition to the Earth as well.
Astronomers and scientists were curious to know what was beneath the clouds. Two spacecraft went up on the space shuttle Atlantis to find more about the surface, clouds, and other data. In May of 1989 on the STS-30 mission, Magellan went up to orbit around Venus. Galileo followed on the STS-34 mission in October of 1989. Although Galileo's main objective was to probe Jupiter, it did a flyby of Venus to take infrared pictures of the clouds in February of 1990. Magellan was named after the 16th century explorer Ferdinand Magellan. Even though Magellan was launched first it did not go into orbit around Venus until August of 1990. Magellan mapped the surface using a SAR, Synthetic Aperture Radar.
From these and other probes and spacecraft we have learned a number of things. The surface is dusty, arid, and mostly flat with some deep valleys. It is very hot, with a surface temperature of 860°. This makes Venus the hottest planet in the solar system! Since the atmosphere is made of mostly carbon dioxide, Venus is uninhabitable. The barometric pressure is almost 100 times that of the Earth. To give you an idea of how much that is, the probes that landed on the surface would fail because of the high pressure. It sometimes rains on Venus, sulfuric acid and water vapor. Because of the high temperatures and dense cloud cover, Venus has what some scientists call "the greenhouse effect gone wild". What that means is heat from the sun can get in, but cannot escape. Put very simply, the clouds hold all the heat in.
We have learned a lot about Venus in the last few centuries. We still watch in the evening or in the morning depending on what phase it is in. But somehow it still seems mysterious the way it hides behind its clouds.
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