Friday, October 9, 2020

VENUS - our sister planet.

 -  2855  -  VENUS  -  our sister planet.    Venus is our next door neighbor in the Solar System.  It is about the same size as Earth, 82% in mass but 95% in diameter, 7,521 miles versus Earth’s 7,926 mile diameter.  Venus is closer to the Sun at 72% of the Earth-Sun distance.  You would think that Venus would have many more similarities with Earth, but the truth is it could not be much different.  Venus is the brightest, hottest, deadliest, second closet planet to the Sun.


---------------------------  2855  -  VENUS  -  our sister planet.    

-  Venus is our sister planet.  But a weird sister she is  Venus is the second planet from the Sun and is an oddity in many ways.

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-  On June 5, 2012, we saw a ultra-rare transit of Venus, in which the planet passed in front of the sun as seen from Earth. The planet Venus completed its transit across the Sun’s diameter in 6 hours and 40 minutes.  We have learned a lot more about the planet Venus.  Here are some of the interesting facts:  

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-  There are more volcanoes on Venus than on any other planet in the solar system. Astronomers know of more than 1,600 volcanoes on its surface, but there are likely many more too small for us to see. Scientists think most of these are dormant, though a handful may still be active.

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-  A day on Venus lasts 243 Earth days.  That is how long it takes Venus to make one rotation, while a year on Venus, its revolution period around the sun is shorter, at just 224.7 Earth days.

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-  Of all the solar system's planets, Venus is the closest to a twin of Earth. The two bodies are nearly of equal size, and Venus' composition is largely the same as Earth's. The orbit of Venus is also the closest to Earth's of any solar system planet. Both worlds have relatively young surfaces, and both have thick atmospheres with clouds.  However,  Venus' clouds are mostly made of poisonous sulfuric acid.

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-  Venus is scorching hot.  Because the bulk of its atmosphere is made of carbon dioxide, an extreme greenhouse effect is warming the surface of Venus. Temperatures there can reach a scorching 870 degrees Fahrenheit.  That is hot enough to melt lead.

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-  The air pressure on the surface of Venus is extreme, about 90 times higher than the pressure at sea level here on Earth. In other words, the pressure on Venus is about the same as the water pressure on Earth about half a mile under the ocean.

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-  Venus is rare among the planets in that we can see it cross in front of the sun. Only Venus and Mercury do this from the vantage point of Earth. Venus transits occur rarely, with pairs separated by eight years coming around less than once a century.

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-  While Venus is not nearly the largest planet of the solar system, its proximity to Earth makes it the brightest of the planets in the sky. It  qualifies as the second-brightest object in the nighttime sky, after only the moon.

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-   Venus has been a target of observation for millennia.  The ancient Babylonians tracked its wanderings through the sky in records that date as far back as 1600 BC. The Greek mathematician Pythagoras was the first to discover that the brightest stars in the morning and evening sky were in fact the same object, Venus.

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-  Winds swipe across Venus at super-fast speeds that can reach 450 miles an hour in its middle cloud layer. These Venusian winds are faster than the speediest tornado on Earth.

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-  Venus has phases.  Because Venus orbits the sun within Earth's orbit, the planet appears to have phases like the moon. When Venus is on the opposite side of the sun, it is in full phase, while it appears in new phase when it is between the Earth and the sun.  The first person to witness these phases was Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei in 1610

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-----------------  There are several other reviews about Venus if u r interested:

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-  2735  - VENUS  -  explain its strange rotation ?   Venus is unique in our Solar System because it is what’s known as a “super-rotator“.  That means that Venus’ atmosphere rotates faster than the planet itself. Only Saturn’s moon Titan has the same characteristic.

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-   2246  -  Venus our sister planet.  What is it really like there?  What are the “gravity waves”  spotted in its upper atmosphere?  Could Venus ever have had conditions that could support life?  Could this tell us about the likelihood of finding life on similar bodies like these exoplanets?  What is the history and the math used to study the planet next door?  

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-  1873  -  Venus and Mercury.   Space probes to the inner planets have brought us new knowledge of the Solar System formation.  Like expected new knowledge has brought new mysteries to solve.

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-   1778  -  Venus must have some resurfacing hiding many old crater scars. Mars and Venus, our Sister Planets.  Mars has become a cold, dry desert with an ultra-thin atmosphere.  Venus has turned itself inside-out with intense heat and an ultra-thick atmosphere.  Earth is in the middle.

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-  1729  -  Walk with Venus on a Starry night . Compare the differences from Earth

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-  1706  -  January 2015 watch for Mercury and Venus, low in the western sky.  These two planets could not be more different.  Try this review for comparisons.

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-  1480   - June 5, 21012, Venus will pass in front of the Sun.  Use it to calculate the distance to Venus.    Venus has not crossed the face of the Sun since 1882. It did last time in 2004.  Then the transit across the Sun again in 2012, June 5th.  We are fortunate in the U.S. to be on the sun-facing side when this happens.  The Venus transit will not happen again until 2117, someone needs to take notes for me.  I will miss this one.


-  1368  -  Venus is our  nearest planet.  Next to the Moon it is the brightest object in the night sky.  Its reflective clouds make it the brightest in reflecting sunlight.  A property called “albedo” , or, reflectivity.  The Reflectivity of Earth is 29%.  The reflectivity of the Moon is 12%.  The reflectivity of Venus is 75%.

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-  1176   -  Since April 11, 2006, the ESA, European Space Agency, has had a spacecraft orbiting Venus, “Venus Express“.  The data collected  from this and other missions paints a far different picture:  The clouds are not water clouds, they are sulfuric acid clouds.  The atmosphere is not like ours with nitrogen and oxygen but almost entirely carbon dioxide:

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---------------  Earth:   77% nitrogen,  21% oxygen.

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--------------  Venus:   96% carbon dioxide ,   3% nitrogen

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-  945  -  Venus greenhouse effect.

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-  817  -  Venus mysteries.  Venus is our next door neighbor in the Solar System.  It is about the same size as Earth, 82% in mass but 95% in diameter, 7,521 miles versus Earth’s 7,926 mile diameter.  Venus is closer to the Sun at 72% of the Earth-Sun distance.  You would think that Venus would have many more similarities with Earth, but the truth is it could not be much different.  Venus is the brightest, hottest, deadliest, second closet planet to the Sun.

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-  587  -  Venus is tilted just 3 degrees from perpendicular.  It takes 163 days to reach our sister planet, the second rock from the Sun, and it should arrive in April, 2006.  Venus is the third brightest object in the Sky following the Sun and the Moon.  It is also called the evening star and the morning star.  

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- It is our sister planet because it is so close, formed at the same time and about the same size.  Venus diameter is 7,521 miles, Earth is 7,926 miles, a difference barely the distance from San Francisco to Los Angeles.  Venus is 5 *10^24 kilograms and Earth is 6*10^24 Kilograms, 81.5% the mass of the Earth .  But Venus is different:

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-  1480  -  Learn how to calculate the Venus transit of the Sun.  It happened in 2012.  The transit took 67 hours on June 12.  The next transit is in 2117.   These transit measurements were first made in 1761, then again in 1769 making a calculation for the Earth - Sun distance to be 93,726,000 miles.  Today our precise measurement is 92,955,000 miles.

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-  October 7, 2020                                                                              2855                                                                                                                                                

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--------------------- ---  Friday, October 9, 2020  ---------------------------






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