Planet Venus Facts: A Hot, Hellish & Volcanic Planet Planet Venus Facts: A Hot, Hellish & Volcanic Planet By Charles Q. Choi, Space.com Contributor | November 4, 2014 09:01pm ET MORE Credit: NASA Venus, the second planet from the sun, is named for the Roman goddess of love and beauty. The planet — the only planet named after a female — may have been named for the most beautiful deity of her pantheon because it shone the brightest of the five planets known to ancient astronomers. In ancient times, Venus was often thought to be two different stars, the evening star and the morning star — that is, the ones that first appeared at sunset and sunrise. In Latin, they were respectively known as Vesper and Lucifer. In Christian times, Lucifer, or "light-bringer," became known as the name of Satan before his fall. Physical characteristics Venus and Earth are often called twins because they are similar in size , mass, density, composition and gravity. However, the similarities end there. [ Photos: Venus, the Mysterious Planet Next Door ] Venus is the hottest world in the solar system.

Although Venus is not the planet closest to the sun, its dense atmosphere traps heat in a runaway version of the greenhouse effect that warms Earth. As a result, temperatures on Venus reach 870 degrees Fahrenheit (465 degrees Celsius), more than hot enough to melt lead. Probes that scientists have landed there have survived only a few hours before being destroyed . Venus has a hellish atmosphere as well, consisting mainly of carbon dioxide with clouds of sulfuric acid, and scientists have only detected trace amounts of water in the atmosphere. The atmosphere is heavier than that of any other planet, leading to a surface pressure 90 times that of Earth. The surface of Venus is extremely dry. During its evolution, ultraviolet rays from the sun evaporated water quickly, keeping it in a prolonged molten state . There is no liquid water on its surface today because the scorching heat created by its ozone-filled atmosphere would cause any to boil away.

Roughly two-thirds of the Venusian surface is covered by flat, smooth plains that are marred by thousands of volcanoes, some which are still active today , ranging from about 0.5 to 150 miles (0.8 to 240 kilometers) wide, with lava flows carving long, winding canals up to more than 3,000 miles (5,000 km) in length, longer than on any other planet. Six mountainous regions make up about one-third of the Venusian surface. One mountain range, called Maxwell, is about 540 miles (870 km) long and reaches up to some 7 miles (11.3 km) high, making it the highest feature on the planet. Venus also possesses a number of surface features unlike anything on Earth. For example, Venus has coronae, or crowns — ringlike structures that range from roughly 95 to 360 miles (155 to 580 km) wide. Scientists believe these formed when hot material beneath the crust rises up, warping the planet’s surface.

Venus also has tesserae, or tiles — raised areas in which many ridges and valleys have formed in different directions. With conditions on Venus that could be described as infernal, the ancient name for Venus — Lucifer — seems to fit. However, this name did not carry any fiendish connotations; Lucifer means "light-bringer," and when seen from Earth, Venus is brighter than any other planet or even any star in the night sky because of its highly reflective clouds and its closeness to our planet. Venus takes 243 Earth days to rotate on its axis, by far the slowest of any of the major planets, and because of this sluggish spin, its metal core cannot generate a magnetic field similar to Earth's. Orbital characteristics If viewed from above, Venus rotates on its axis the opposite way that most planets rotate. That means on Venus, the sun would appear to rise in the west and set in the east. On Earth, the sun appears to rise in the east and set in the west. The Venusian year — the time it takes to orbit the sun — is about 225 Earth days long. Normally, that would mean that days on Venus would be longer than years.

However, because of Venus' curious retrograde rotation, the time from one sunrise to the next is only about 117 Earth days long. [Gallery: Transit of Venus from June 5, 2012, when the planet transited in front of the sun for the last time until the year 2117. Venus' southern hemisphere, as seen in the ultraviolet. Credit: ESA Venus, Second Planet from the Sun | Wyzant Resources Venus Venus, goddess of Love and Beauty, Springtime and Flowers (second planet from the Sun). The second planet in distance from the Sun, the most brilliant object in the sky, she appears to welcome both the dawn and the dusk. Her symbol appears below. Venus is the one goddess whose name was given to an important planet. Venus (corresponds to the Greek: Aphrodite, and the Babylonian: Ishtar) is the goddess of love and beauty. The planet is so named probably because it is the brightest of the planets known to the ancients. With a few exceptions, the surface features on Venus are named for female figures.

This is the planet commonly called the evening star or the morning star (depending on which side of the sun it happens to be). It is considered the brightest and most beautiful object in the heavens next to the sun and moon, and is far brighter than any star. Originally the Greeks thought they were two different planets. The morning star was called phosphorus (light-bringer in Greek) because once it appeared in the eastern skies, the light of dawn would soon come. The evening star was called Hesperus (west in Greek) because it always shined in the western sky after sunset. Once the Greeks learned that Phosporus and Hesperus were really the same planet, they named it Aphrodite as befitted its beauty; and then the Romans changed the name to Venus which we now use. Her symbol is said to represent a hand mirror. Scientific facts about Venus: Venus is the brightest object in our sky, except for the Sun and the Moon . The upper clouds of poisonous sulfuric acid swirl in a pattern of yellowish mists on Venus. Moving at speeds almost three times faster than winds in a hurricane, they race around the planet once every four days.

People once imagined Venus as a Garden of Eden with lush vegetation, sparkling streams, and life. They regarded Venus as Earths twin because its size, mass, and density are so much like Earths, but there the similarities end. Beneath the acid clouds is a planet we could not imagine in our wildest dreams because day and night, lightning and thunder flash and boom across a rainless sky. Earths clouds consist of water droplets but those upper clouds of Venus are droplets of sulfuric acid. The atmosphere is so dense we could nearly swim through it and the pressure is as strong as that which exists one kilometer below the surface of the oceans on Earth. Sign up for free to access more Greek gods resources like . Wyzant Resources features blogs, videos, lessons, and more about Greek gods and over 250 other subjects. Stop struggling and start learning today with thousands of free resources! Venus Facts - The Planet Venus - Venus For Kids Download Questions about Venus (all answers found on this page) Venus is the brightest planet in the Solar System and can be seen even in daylight if you know where to look.

When Venus is west of the Sun, she rises before the Sun in the morning and is known as the Morning Star. When she is east of the Sun, she shines in the evening just after sunset and is known as the Evening Star. The word planet is from the ancient Greek word πλάνητης, planets, which means a wanderer, because they move through the stars, which seem to be fixed in the sky. This movement is because the planets are all orbiting around the sun. Venus orbits round the sun in 225 days. The Earth takes 365 days to complete an orbit of the sun. So a year on Venus only lasts for 262 days! Venus has phases like the moon because the orbit of Venus is between the Earth and the Sun . When Venus shows only a crescent, like the crescent moon, she is at her brightest because she is then very close to the Earth. You can only see the crescent with the help of a telescope, but this photograph shows the crescent moon and a bright Venus in the evening sky. Figure 1. Venus and the Crescent Moon. Venus is the 2nd planet from the sun.

The closest planet to the sun is Mercury . Then comes Venus and then Earth , followed by Mars , Saturn , Jupiter , Uranus , Neptune and Pluto . There are other orbiting bodies beyond Pluto but astronomers (scientists who study the Solar System ) do not agree about whether these are planets. The planets in the Solar system are given the names of Roman Gods or their attendants. Venus is called after the Roman Goddess of love and beauty. Venus is the planet which is closest to the Earth and is a little smaller than the Earth. The circumference of the Earth (the distance right round the middle of the Earth at the equator) is 12,760 kilometres, or 7926 miles. The circumference of Venus is 12,103 kilometres, or 7520 miles. Venus looks bigger than the Earth in figure 1 because of the very deep layer of gases that surround the planet. Venus, like the other planet between the Earth and the Sun, Mercury, has no moons. Venus is 67 million miles, or 108 million kilometres, from the Sun.

Venus is covered by clouds of water vapour and sulphuric acid and the surface cannot be seen with an ordinary astronomy telescope. Venus is the hottest planet in the Solar System , even hotter than Mercury, which is closer to the Sun. The temperature on the surface of Venus is about 860° Fahrenheit or 460° Celsius. Compare this to a warm summer’s day in London, when the temperature might be 80° Fahrenheit or 26° Celsius. The atmosphere on Venus is composed of carbon dioxide. The surface is heated by radiation from the sun, but the heat cannot escape through the clouds and layer of carbon dioxide. (This is a “greenhouse effect”). In 1975 the Soviet Union sent two spacecraft landers to Venus, Venera 9 and Venera 10. These landers were the very first to reach the planet’s surface and they sent back images to the Earth. It is not a very clear picture but it is famous since this is the first photograph we have of the surface of Venus. Figure 2. The first photograph of Venus' surface, taken in 1975.

It shows a bare landscape with volcanic rocks of about a metre high The USA space agency, NASA, were able to see more of the surface of Venus by using advanced radar systems. NASA’s Magellan spacecraft completed a full map of Venus’ surface in 1993. Venus has continents, mountains and craters. This NASA photograph, taken by Magellan spacecraft radar that can get through the cloud, shows a planet that looks quite like the Earth. Figure 3. A NASA photograph of Venus, showing continents and mountains. There is no life at all on Venus and life could never be supported there because of the extreme heat and the atmosphere. The mountains and craters on Venus have all been given female names such as the crater called Billie Holiday after a female American jazz singer. There is only one male name - the Maxwell Mountains which are called after the Scottish scientist James Clerk Maxwell. The largest continent on Venus has been named Aphrodite. Aphrodite was the Greek Goddess of love and beauty and is really the same deity as Venus.

Useful Websites January guide to the bright planets | Astronomy Essentials | EarthSky January guide to the bright planets By Bruce McClure and Deborah Byrd in Astronomy Essentials | January 12, 2017 In January 2017, Venus blazes in the west after sunset. Mars is fainter, and nearby. The other 3 bright planets – Jupiter, Saturn and Mercury – light up the hours before sunrise. Next moon and planet pairing will be centered on or near January 19, 2017. The moon will sweep past Jupiter and the star Spica. Read more . Two of the five bright planets rise to great prominence in January 2017 sky. Venus rules over the evening sky while Jupiter rules the morning. Venus, the brightest planet, blazes in the west first thing at dusk, and reaches its greatest elongation as the “evening star” on January 12 . Jupiter, the second-brightest planet, lords over the eastern half of sky between midnight and sunrise. Mars is near Venus in the evening sky, but it’s higher up and much fainter than Venus, setting in the west shortly after Venus does.

Meanwhile, Saturn appears in the southeastern sky before dawn. Mercury a short hop beneath Saturn, just as darkness is giving way to morning twilight. Follow the links below to learn more about planets in January 2017. Skywatcher, by Predrag Agatonovic . Brilliant Venus is the “evening star.” Okay, it’s not a star. It’s a planet. But people will call it the evening star all the same. In these past weeks, many have noticed Venus and been amazed at its brilliance in the west after sunset. It’s the brightest planet and very, very bright, to reach its greatest evening elongation on January 12 . Be sure to catch the waxing crescent moon near Venus in early January, as displayed on the sky chart above. Click here for details . Watch for Venus to close the gap between itself and Mars. These two visible evening planets will be closer together on the sky’s dome by the month’s end and closer yet in early February 2017. From mid-northern latitudes (U.S. and Europe), Venus sets about four hours after the sun throughout the month.

At mid-southern latitudes (Australia and South Africa), Venus sets about about three hours after the sun in early January and about 2.5 hours after sun by the month’s end. The moon will sweep by Venus and Mars again before January, 2017 ends. Read more . You needed a telescope to see Neptune … but Venus, the brightest planet, was in conjunction with Neptune, the Hof our solar system’s major planets, on January 12, 2017. Photo by Borislava Georgieva in Bulgaria. Mars, east of Venus, until mid-evening. After appearing as a bright red light in our sky last May and June 2016, Mars now appears only modestly bright (though possibly still ruddy), above dazzling Venus. Venus is so bright that it pops out almost immediately after sunset, but you’ll have to wait until nightfall to see fainter Mars. Look for the moon close to Mars for a few evenings, on or near January 2 or 3 . From mid-northern latitudes (U.S. and Europe), look for the red planet Mars to set in the west around 9 to 10 p.m. all month long.

At mid-southern latitudes (Australia and South Africa), Mars sets in the west around 9 to 10 p.m. (10 to 11 p.m. summer time). Mars will linger in our sky for several more months. Keep in mind, however, that Earth is traveling away from Mars as we speak – moving far ahead of this planet in the endless race around the sun – so Mars is dimming in our evening sky. Mars is in its long, lingering, relatively inconspicuous phase now. It’ll be still visible in the west to the unaided eye – though not prominent – during its conjunction with Uranus on the evening of February 27, 2017. Mars won’t make its transition from the evening to morning sky until July 27, 2017. Even so, Mars’ stature in the evening sky will continue to diminish to that of a rather faint “star,” and we expect few – if any – skywatchers to observe the conjunction of Mars and Mercury in the evening sky on June 28, 2017.

The conjunction of Mars and Venus in the morning sky on October 5, 2017, may well present the first good opportunity to spot Mars in the morning sky when it returns from being behind the sun on July 27, 2017. Looking for a sky almanac? EarthSky recommends… View larger | Mikhail Chubarets in the Ukraine made this chart. It shows the view of Mars through a telescope in 2016. We never see Mars as a disk like this with the eye alone. But you can see why Mars was bright to the eye in 2016, and is now fading. Watch for the moon to meet up with Saturn on or near Janaury 24, 2017. Read more . Saturn returns to the morning sky. Saturn swung behind the sun on December 10, 2016, transitioning from the evening to morning sky. In both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, Saturn returned to the morning sky in late December 2016. In early January, Saturn rises in the east about two hours before the sun, and by the month’s end, Saturn comes up several hours before sunrise.

Be sure to let the waning crescent moon guide you to Saturn (and the nearby star Antares) for several days, centered on or near January 24 . Saturn, the farthest world that you can easily view with the eye alone, appears golden in color. It shines with a steady light. Binoculars don’t reveal Saturn’s gorgeous rings, by the way, although binoculars will enhance Saturn’s golden color. To see the rings, you need a small telescope. A telescope will also reveal one or more of Saturn’s many moons, most notably Titan . Saturn’s rings are inclined at nearly 27o from edge-on, exhibiting their northern face. In October 2017, the rings will open most widely, displaying a maximum inclination of 27o. As with so much in space (and on Earth), the appearance of Saturn’s rings from Earth is cyclical. In the year 2025, the rings will appear edge-on as seen from Earth. After that, we’ll begin to see the south side of Saturn’s rings, to increase to a maximum inclination of 27o by May 2032.

Tom Wildoner over-exposed Saturn itself to capture this view of Saturn’s moons on June 25, 2016. Visit Tom at LeisurelyScientist.com . Contrasting the size of Saturn and its rings with our planet Earth via Hubble Heritage Team . The moon swings by the planet Jupiter and the star Spica for several days, centered on or near January 19, 2017. Read more . Bright Jupiter lords over the morning sky. Jupiter’s increasing prominence as the “morning star” will be hard to overlook. To see Jupiter, seek out the brightest starlike object in the predawn sky or the morning twilight and that’ll be the king planet Jupiter! Jupiter rises in the east at late night and soars to its highest point in the sky at or near dawn. From mid-northern latitudes, like those in the U.S. and Europe, Jupiter rises around one hour after the midnight hour in early January. By the month’s end, Jupiter rises roughly one hour before midnight. From mid-southern latitudes (Australia), look for Jupiter to rise around midnight in early January and about two hours before midnight by the end of the month.

If you’re not a night owl, your best bet for catching Jupiter is to wake up before sunrise to see this brilliant beauty of a planet lighting up the predawn and dawn sky. Watch for the waning moon to join up with Jupiter for several days, centered on or near January 19 . See the above sky chart. By the way, Jupiter shines in front of the constellation Virgo, near Virgo’s brightest star, Spica . Jupiter serves a great reference for learning the constellations of the zodiac , because Jupiter stays in each constellation for roughly a year. So use Jupiter to become familiar with the star Spica and the constellation Virgo, starting now, and throughout 2017. If you have binoculars or a telescope, it’s fairly easy to see Jupiter’s four major moons, which look like pinpricks of light on or near the same plane. They are often called the Galilean moons to honor Galileo, who discovered these great Jovian moons in 1610. In their order from Jupiter, these moons are Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. Jupiter and its four major moons via Jan Sandberg These moons circle Jupiter around the Jovian equator.

In cycles of six years, we view Jupiter’s equator edge-on. So, in 2015, we got to view a number of mutual events involving Jupiter’s moons through a high-powered telescope. Click here or here or here for more details. Although Jupiter’s axial tilt is only 3o out of perpendicular relative to the ecliptic (Earth’s orbital plane), Jupiter’s axis will tilt enough toward the sun and Earth so that the farthest of these four moons, Callisto, will NOT pass in front of Jupiter or behind Jupiter for a period of about three years, starting in late 2016. During this approximate 3-year period, Callisto will remain “perpetually” visible, alternately swinging “above” and “below” Jupiter. Click here for a Jupiter’s moons almanac, courtesy of Sky & Telescope. Eliot Herman in Tucson, Arizona caught Mercury on the night of December 11, 2016, amidst crepuscular rays from the setting sun. Look for the thin waning crescent moon and the planet Mercury low in the sky as the predawn darkness gives way to dawn. Who knows? Someone might even catch the moon below Mercury on January 26!

The green line depicts the ecliptic – Earth’s orbital plane projected on the sky. Read more . Mercury in the morning sky. Mercury transitioned from the evening to morning sky on December 28, 2016. This month, beginning in the second week of January 2017, Mercury should climb far enough from the glare of sunrise to become visible in the morning sky from both the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere. Saturn rises before Mercury does, so use Saturn as your guide “star” to locating Mercury closer to the horizon. Try viewing Mercury before sunrise for a few weeks, centered on Mercury’s greatest morning elongation on January 19 . Mercury is tricky. If you look too soon, Mercury will be lost in the twilight glare; if you look too late, it will have followed the sun beneath the horizon. Watch for Mercury low in the sky, and near the sunrise point on the horizon, seeking for this hidden treasure around 90 to 60 minutes before sunrise. Remember, binoculars are always helpful for any Mercury search. Good Luck!

For a big challenge, seek for the slender waning crescent moon pairing up with Mercury before sunrise on January 25 and 26 . Binoculars may come in handy! Click here for recommended almanacs; they can give you Mercury’s rising time in your sky . What do we mean by bright planet? By bright planet, we mean any solar system planet that is easily visible without an optical aid and that has been watched by our ancestors since time immemorial. In their outward order from the sun, the five bright planets are Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. These planets actually do appear bright in our sky. They are typically as bright as – or brighter than – the brightest stars. Plus, these relatively nearby worlds tend to shine with a steadier light than the distant, twinkling stars. You can spot them, and come to know them as faithful friends, if you try. This image is from February 8, 2016. It shows all 5 bright planets at once. Photo by our friend Eliot Herman in Tucson, Arizona. Bottom line: In January 2017, two of the five bright planets appear in the evening sky at dusk/nightfall: Venus and Mars.

The other three planets – Jupiter, Saturn and Mercury – are found in the morning sky. Morning Star - Universe Today Universe Today by Matt Williams [/caption] If you look to the morning sky – to the east that is, as the sun’s rising – you will notice a bright star in the firmament, one that should not be there. Theoretically, stars only come out at night and should be well on their way to bed by the time the sun rises, correct? Well, that’s because the Morning Star, as it’s known, isn’t a star at all, but the planet Venus. It is both the morning and evening star, the former when it appears in the east during sunrise and the latter when it appears in the west during sunset. Because of its unique nature and appearance in the sky, this “star” has figured prominently in the mythologies of many cultures. In ancient Sumerian mythology, it was named Inanna (Babylonian Ishtar), the name given to the goddess of love and personification of womanhood. The Ancient Egyptians believed Venus to be two separate bodies and knew the morning star as Tioumoutiri and the evening star as Ouaiti.

Likewise, believing Venus to be two bodies, the Ancient Greeks called the morning star Phosphoros (or Eosphoros) the “Bringer of Light” (or “Bringer of Dawn”) and the evening star they called Hesperos (“star of the evening”). By Hellenistic times, they had realized the two were the same planet, which they named after their goddess of love, Aphrodite. The Phoenicians, never ones to be left out where astronomy and mythology were concerned, named it Astarte, after their own goddess of fertility. In Iranian mythology, especially in Persian mythology, the planet usually corresponds to the goddess Anahita, and sometimes AredviSura, the goddesses of fertility and rivers respectively. Mirroring the ancient Greeks, they initially believed the planet to be two separate objects, but soon realized they were one. The Romans, who derived much of their religious pantheon from the Greek tradition and near Eastern tradition, maintained this trend by naming the planet Venus after their goddess of love. Later, the name Lucifer, the “bringer of light”, would emerge as a Latinized form of Phosphoros (from which we also get the words phosphorus and phosphorescence).

This would prove influential to Christians during the Middle Ages who used it to identify the devil. Medieval Christians thusly came to identify the Morningstar with evil, being somewhat more concerned with sin and vice than fertility and love! However, the identification of the Morningstar as a symbol of fertility and womanhood remains entrenched, best demonstrated by the fact that the astronomical symbol for Venus happens to be the same as the one used in biology for the female sex: a circle with a small cross beneath. The Morningstar also figures prominently in the mythology of countless other cultures, including the Mayans, Aborigines, and Maasai people of Kenya. To all of these cultures, the Morningstar still serves as an important spiritual, agricultural and astrological role. To the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans and Vietnamese, she is known literally as the “metal star”, based on the Five Elements. We have written many articles about the Morning Star for Universe Today. Here’s an article about how to find Venus in the sky , and here’s an article about the brightest planet . If you’d like more information on the Morning Star, check out Hubblesite’s News Releases about Venus , and here’s a link to NASA’s Solar System Exploration Guide on Venus .

We’ve also recorded an entire episode of Astronomy Cast all about Venus. Listen here, Episode 50: Venus . Sources: Masonic Library - Venus & Freemasonry Venus & Freemasonry Details Hits: 14691 Venus is the second of the four terrestrial planets, from the sun, and is, after the Sun and Moon, the brightest object in the sky, being fifteen times brighter than Sirius A, the most prominent star. We call the planet Venus the morning star when it appears in the east at sunrise, and the evening star when it appears in the west at sunset, although the ancients called it Hesperus in the evening and Phosphorous, or Lucifer, in the morning. Because of the distances of the respective orbits of Venus and the Earth from the Sun, Venus is never visible more than three hours before sunrise nor three hours after sunset, and it may also surprise you that Venus can be seen in broad daylight, provided you know where, and when, to look after reference to an almanac. Galileo made the first telescopic observations of the planet in 1610.

The discovery that Venus and Mercury exhibited phases like the Moon, convinced Galileo that the planets must revolve around the Sun and not the Earth. When viewed through a telescope, the planet Venus exhibits Moon-like phases, and a full Venus appears at its smallest when it is on the far side of the Sun at a distance of 257 million kilometres from us. Maximum brilliance is seen in the crescent phase when it is much closer to Earth at a distance of only 41.4 million kilometres. Venus’s complete cloud cover and deep atmosphere make it difficult to study from the Earth, and most knowledge of the planet has been obtained through the use of space vehicles, particularly those that carried probes that descended through the atmosphere to the planetary surface. The Americans sent Mariner, Pioneer and Magellan missions to Venus and the Russians despatched Venera and Vega missions, the latter were primarily involved in investigating Halley’s Comet and the study of Venus was a secondary objective. Some of those missions were flyby and others were orbiters but the most information was obtained from probes launched from the mother ship, that descended to the planetary surface and broadcast scientific data, albeit briefly.

The Venera landers operated for about an hour, returning information, including photographs of the surface to the craft in orbit above, before being crushed by the huge atmospheric pressure of the planet. The orbiter relayed the data back to Earth where it was eagerly studied. The Magellan probe, launched in 1989 stayed in orbit and began transmitting radar images of the planet in 1990. They have been computer-processed to form spectacular three-dimensional views of the terrain which will probably never be seen by human eyes. The surface temperature on Venus is highly uniform and is about 462 C, hot enough to melt lead; the surface pressure is 96 Earth atmospheres, making Venusian atmosphere on the surface, denser than water; the atmosphere consists almost wholly (97%) of carbon dioxide with only traces of nitrogen, oxygen and water vapour. The base of the cloud is approximately fifty km above the surface and the cloud particles are concentrated sulphuric acid. Beneath the cloud it’s light, but hazy.

The sulphur content of the clouds is of volcanic origin and the sulphuric acid never reaches the surface as rain because it evaporates at the cloud base and can only remain in the atmosphere as cloud. The planet has no detectable magnetic field which was an unexpected find and is attributed to the slow rate of rotation or spin of the planet. The chemistry of Earth and Venus are not that different it’s just that the CO2 on Earth is largely tied up in oceans and in limestone that does not exist on Venus. Many scientists argue that Venus, being closer to the Sun, was subjected to a so-called runaway greenhouse effect, which caused any existing oceans to evaporate into the atmosphere, where the water molecules broke down under ultra-violet radiation. The hydrogen atoms of the water molecules could have been lost to space and the oxygen atoms to the crust where they combined in rock-forming silicate minerals. The reason for both Venus’s brightness and for the lack of knowledge is the same: the thick blanket of clouds that reflect 76% of the sunlight reaching it. Cloud patterns and weather features can be discerned as streaks in the cloud tops that give some information about wind motion, the upper-level winds circling the planet at 360 km/h.

These winds cover the planet completely, blowing virtually at every latitude from equator to pole. Tracking the motion of descending probes has shown that, despite the scale of these high-speed upper-level winds, much more than half of Venus’s tremendously dense atmosphere, near the planets surface is almost stagnant. If the surface movement is virtually nil why should the upper level winds blow at 360 km/h? Venus rotates very slowly on its axis, and the direction is retrograde (opposite to that of Earth and all other planets). Curiously the same side of Venus always faces the Earth when the two planets are closest. At such times, the side facing Earth can be viewed and mapped by Earth-based radio telescopes that “see” through the clouds. What has been determined is that 85% of the surface is plains. Superimposed on those plains are small and large volcanoes and some impact craters. There are no small impact craters, i.e. less than 8km, probably because all small meteors burn up in the dense atmosphere. The highlands exhibit varying morphologies comprising; elevated plateau; folded mountain ranges, and shield volcanoes, among others.

The Earth’s closest neighbour in its journey around the Sun is Venus, just 41 million km away. The Earth is 150 million km from the Sun and Venus’s almost circular orbit is 109 million km from the Sun. There are many similarities between the two planets, so much so that Venus was called our twin planet in space and it was hypothesised that beneath the cloud cover was a tropical paradise awaiting the first visitor from Earth. We now know the truth to be vastly different with the horrendous heat, overwhelming pressure and highly acidic atmosphere. Despite Mercury being closer to the Sun, Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system. Rather than being a paradise, it is more like hell and colonization is a very remote possibility perhaps centuries away, if at all. When scientists first measured the rotation rate of Venus using radar in the 1960’s, they expected a fairly fast rotation rate, similar to that of earth and Mars. What they found, was a rotation taking 243 days, longer than the planet’s year of 225 days, and in the wrong direction, i.e. from East to West or, a retrograde motion.

The main work of the Russian probes has been to analyse the rocks around their landing sites, and to collect samples for internal analysis, in addition, the Soviet spacecraft were equipped with cameras to photograph the landscape. A few colour photos and many black and white have been taken and I can show you in the South. Against the background of the Zodiac, Venus completes a five pointed star shape every eight years and returns to its exact starting place after five cycles, or forty years. Every eight years it marks a point in time when the solar calendar, the lunar calendar and the sidereal calendar all coincide within two minutes. After five cycles, i.e. forty years that time is synchronised to within fractions of a second, providing a calendar and a clock that was used to set the time of day until the 1950’s when even more-accurate atomic clocks were developed. Put simply, Venus is the metronome of our world. Understand this and such other vital functions as the seasons and the tides, and you master your environment both in terms of farming and seamanship, ensuring that you will eat and trade efficiently. This was of great importance to early civilizations and well repaid the centuries of observation necessary to learn this.

Megalithic observatories were created at Newgrange in Ireland some 5,500 years ago to accurately measure the Venus cycle and mark the Winter solstice. This was an important measurement tool for these ancient astronomers because when viewed from Earth, Venus was the most accurate indicator of the time of year, in the solar system. The study of Phoenician gods revealed three goddesses to be different aspects of the planet Venus. A similar trilogy exists in the Norse pantheon, but with different names. It is believed that the Phoenicians, or Canaanites carried their beliefs with them when working on the Temple for Solomon and may have affected its ultimate design. The family of William St. Clair of Roslyn fame, hereditary Grand Masters in early Scottish Masonry include both Jewish and Norse ancestors, so it is possible that Venus became involved in early Masonic ceremonies via Scottish Freemasonry. It is said that the first known name for the city of Jerusalem was Urushalim, “Uru’ founded by “Shalem”, the name of the Canaanite god of Venus in its evening setting, but Solomon’s Temple was facing in the opposite direction, towards Venus rising in its role as morning star.

We can be certain that King Solomon’s Temple was built by Canaanites who were known to worship Venus, also we can understand that Solomon had no tradition of his own to give him the knowledge of how to build a temple that was properly constructed to interface with the heavens. However it is perplexing that these Venus worshipping Phoenicians were allowed to build the house of God. Biblical scholars have noted from passages such as I Kings 11.5 that Venus was worshipped by Solomon in her special form as the deity of the Phoenicians and he fell out of favour with God. The official worship of Venus as Astarte, the Queen of Heaven continued in the Kingdom of Judah until circa 600 BCE. Moses created Princes of the Tabernacle and the initiations took place when the Pentagram, or blazing star was to be seen in the east. A blazing star that is referred to as a Pentagram can only be a reference to Venus which had long been associated with the pentagram because of the planet’s apparent movement around the sun when observed from Earth.

It is suggested that when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple in year 70 of the Christian Era, a number of the Princes of the Tabernacle managed to escape to locations across Europe. It was from these families that the men came, who went on to found the Knights Templar. The modern Masonic Temple is designed along the same astronomical lines as the Temple at Jerusalem, with the free standing pillars of B and J marking the extremities of the rising sun at the summer solstice in the North, and the winter solstice in the South. On the equinoxes the sun rose between the two pillars in a position due East and on certain dates the planet Venus rose as a bright star ahead of the sun to shine brightly through the dormer into the holy of holies. The layout of every Masonic Temple is said to be a model of Solomon’s Temple, and today every Master Mason is raised from his temporary death by the pre-dawn light of the rising Venus at a symbolic equinox. The rising of Venus was central to Canaanite theology and was associated with resurrection, as it is in Freemasonry in our third degree.

When the candidate is raised from his tomb his head rises in a curve towards the East to meet Venus which is also rising above the horizon. The East-West line marks the equinox, the point of equilibrium between the two solstices, when there are twelve hours of light and twelve of darkness. It appears that some rituals of Craft Masonry are based upon astronomy and have a heritage well over five thousand years old. The W.M. directs the candidates gaze towards the East where he can see a five-pointed ‘star’ rising before the sun at dawn. The planet Venus as she moves around the sky touches the path of the sun in just five places, just like the W.M. embracing the candidate at just five points, when he is raised. Cyclical appearances of the planet Venus, in a pre-dawn rising against a particular part of the sky were clearly of great importance in the early period of Jewish Kings as the Bible tells us. Saul, David and Solomon, all ruled for forty years, a full Venusian cycle. It seems that Freemasonic ritual aligns with the astral cultic practices of the royal lineage of Jerusalem, the city of Venus.

The authors Knight and Lomas are Freemasons and conclude that after 14 years of research and four books culminating in The Book of Hiram, they have found the missing link between Judaism and Christianity on the one hand and the secret Masonic tradition on the other. Freemasonry is a major untapped source of information about our past that is in danger of being lost, forever because of lack of knowledge of the rituals. To lose the information buried within in its rituals, before it is properly understood would be throwing away one of the true treasures of the western world. There seems to have been a hidden astral agenda, in mainstream Judaism and Christianity, that has survived in the Masonic tradition and been reinforced by Norse beliefs in the power of the Bright Morning Star we call Venus. The picture that has been revealed is that some of the rituals of Craft Masonry have been based on astronomy and have a heritage that is over 5,000 years old. They found a chain of belief that has survived being passed through several different cultures to end up in modern Masonic Temples, where it is now faithfully recited without a proper understanding from whence it came, nor what it represents.

WM and brethren it is up to us to try and understand the rituals, which, have been so much a part of our Masonic lives. We should endeavour to look behind the words in future to form greater understanding of those rituals, and I hope that this talk tonight will in some way inspire you to do the same. I have based much of the latter part of this talk on The Hiram Key and can only include a fraction of the findings contained therein. I would hope that you keep an open mind on the subject and read it for your own satisfaction, and you can decide if it is fascinating, or controversial. Incidentally the book is available at our Library for borrowing by interested brethren. VW Bro Robert Taylor Brilliant Venus Returns to Night Sky This Month: How to See It Brilliant Venus Returns to Night Sky This Month: How to See It By Joe Rao, SPACE.com Skywatching Columnist | May 10, 2013 02:54pm ET MORE On Saturday, May 11, 2013, after sunset. Venus has now moved into the evening sky, and tonight it and Jupiter frame the slender crescent moon.

Credit: Starry Night Software Enthusiastic skywatchers have perhaps been wondering what has happened lately to Venus, the most brilliant of all the planets. Since the end of January, Venus has been on a sort of winter and early spring sabbatical. It passed superior conjunction (appearing to go behind the sun as seen from Earth) on March 28 and has been invisible ever since, mired deep in our star's brilliant glare. Nevertheless, with each passing day, Venus has been moving on a slow course toward the east and pulling slowly away from the sun’s general vicinity. [ Skywatching Events for May 2013 ] Finally, during early May, it has begun to emerge as an evening "star" very low in the western twilight. On Saturday evening (May 11), it sets 27 degrees north of due west (10 degrees is roughly equal to the width of your fist held at arm’s length) nearly an hour after sunset.

By June 1, Venus will set 80 minutes after sunset, giving even casual observers their first view of the famed "Evening Star." Venus is so bright that it can be spotted even through twilight very low in the west-northwest sky 45 minutes after sunset, so look early, preferably with binoculars . Appearing as a brilliant white star-like object, Earth's "sister planet" will adorn the western evening sky through the remainder of this year. Crummy summer viewing Unfortunately, for most Northern Hemisphere observers, this is going to turn out to be a rather crummy evening apparition of Venus, especially during the summer months. The reason for this lies in Venus’ placement in the sky relative to the sun . From June 19 through Dec. 10, Venus will appear to have a more southerly declination than the sun. As a consequence, it will appear unusually low over the horizon right after sunset, especially through most of this summer. On July 1, for example, observers living at or near 40 degrees north latitude will see Venus set just 1 1/2 hours after sunset. At mid-twilight, the planet will appear to hover only about 6 degrees above the horizon.

By Aug. 31, this situation will have improved only slightly, as Venus will still be setting only 1 1/2 hours after sundown and at mid-twilight will stand about 8 degrees above the horizon. At no time through July and August will Venus be visible against a completely dark sky, as it will set before the end of evening twilight. [ The 10 Weirdest Facts About Venus ] The situation is better in the Southern Hemisphere, where viewers will see Venus pull well away from the sun and gradually soar progressively higher in the evening sky during July and August. For example, by the end of August, Australians will see Venus setting more than three hours after the sun, and the planet will appear more than 20 degrees above the horizon by the end of evening twilight. Planet Venus is often likened to Earth but with a runaway greenhouse problem. The 2nd planet from the sun is hot shrouded with deadly clouds. Those are hints. Now test your knowledge of Venus facts. Start Over | More Quizzes An autumn improvement During September and October, however, the view will begin to slowly improve for northern observers for three reasons: 1) Venus will be getting brighter as it rounds the sun and speeds toward Earth .

2) Twilight fades faster in the fall than in summer, leaving Venus to shine in a darker sky. By mid-September, Venus finally sets just after the sky has become completely dark. 3) Venus will shift over from the west to the southwest. Objects at a given altitude above the horizon in the southern part of the sky take longer to set than do objects at the same altitude in the west, so the difference between the setting times of the sun and Venus will increase, albeit slowly. On Oct. 1, Venus will set 1 3/4 hours after the sun, but this improves to nearly 2 1/2 hours by Halloween. Venus reaches its greatest angular distance from the sun on Nov. 1, when it will be 47 degrees east of our star. The planet will be brightest in early December as it heads back down toward the sun, reaching its pinnacle of brilliance for this apparition on Dec. 6 at a lantern-like magnitude of minus 4.9. (On the astronomical scale, lower magnitudes signify brighter objects.) By this time, Venus will be an eye-catching sight in the southwest sky for at least a couple of hours after sunset right on through the Christmas season.

Venus then quickly fades, vanishing from view in early January 2014, and passes inferior conjunction (coming between Earth and the sun) on Jan. 10. Within a week it will reemerge as the "Morning Star" low in the southeast sky. Between now and early January, repeated observation of Venus with a small telescope will show the complete range of its phases and disk sizes. The planet is now virtually full (98 percent sunlit), and appears as a tiny, dazzling disk. It will become noticeably less gibbous by late summer. In early November, Venus reaches dichotomy (displaying a half-moon shape ). Then, for the rest of the year the planet displays a large crescent as it swings near the Earth. Indeed, those using telescopes will note that while the Earth-Venus distance is lessening, the apparent size of Venus’ disk will grow, doubling from its present size by Oct. 9. When it has doubled again in size on Dec. 4, its large crescent shape should be easily discernible even in steadily held 7-power binoculars.

Venus will be one of three bright planets involved in what we at SPACE.com are billing as "The Grand Conjunction" later this month. Stay tuned for more details! Editor's note: If you snap an amazing picture of Venus or any other celestial object that you'd like to share for a possible story or image gallery, send photos, comments and your name and location to Managing Editor Tariq Malik at spacephotos@space.com . Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, the Farmer's Almanac and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, New York. Follow us @Spacedotcom , Facebook or Google+ . Originally published on SPACE.com. Venus Venus Early ideas about Venus Because Venus is between us and the Sun, (mean distance from Sun 108 million Kilometres), we only see it near the Sun, either just before Sunrise, or just after Sunset. Although we can only see part of the daylight side lit up by the sun - through a telescope it appears as a crescent, it is still extremely bright.

This is not only because the planet is our near neighbour, it has a high albedo (reflected light) because it is covered by a thick cloudy atmosphere which reflects the sunlight. These clouds also make it impossible to see the surface of Venus through a telescope. Radar has to be used. Venus was seen as the Morning Star and the Evening Star. The careful records by astronomers showed that Venus was one and the same planet, whether it appeared at dawn or sunset. In Northern latitudes, Venus is the most frequently visible of the planets, in Siberia it was the only planet to have a name. It is called Cholbon, and was identified as both the Morning Star and the Evening Star and sometimes any another bright planet which happened to be visible such as Jupiter or Mars. It was observers at more southern latitudes who were able to trace the paths of the planets around the year, and who built up cosmologies, beliefs and methods of divination (astrology), around their observed passages through the apparently fixed stars. On astronomical tables Venus has this symbol which is also used for "female". Venus is named after the Roman goddess of love and peace. To the Greeks this was the goddess Aphrodite.

The planet was associated with the metal copper (from Cyprus, which was Aphrodite's birthplace), a flattish triangle, the number five, the colour blue, and the day Friday. The Saxons used the name of their fertility goddess, Fria which gives the English name of Friday. Greek astronomy derived many of its ideas from the long tradition of astronomy in what is now present day Iraq. This, and its system of making records, derived originally from the Sumerians - of south Siberian origin who conquered what is now south Iraq in the Bronze Age. Inanna, also Ishtar or Eshtar was the morning star and the goddess of love - particularly sex and erotic love,(redlight district in cities, etc) and also of war and battles. She had wings, rode on a lion and was armed with bow and arrows.She is usually depicted near the sun god, since she is always seen near the sun. She had a sister - her evening counterpart who was the guardian of the gateway to the world of the dead. To the Chinese the planet was the Great White One and associated with the element metal - more specifically gold, the direction - west, and the same day in the week.

The idea of the seven day week and the ruling planets of the hours and days may have derived from India. Astronomers in central America had a similar concept. Different associations with this planet were thought of by the astronomers in America. The Pawnee used to sacrifice a maiden to the planet Venus until the 1920s when the US government banned the custom. To the Maya in Central America, this planet was the god of war, and it was believed to beam down evil rays bringing death and destruction. The astronomers therefore made very careful records of this planet, and a ritual calendar was based on this. About Venus Venus is similar to Earth in size, density and mass - only a little smaller (0.815 of Earth's mass). Its radius is 6052 kilometres. It would weigh 4.87 x 1024 kilogrammes. The rotation of Venus was discovered by radar by a collaboration between Jodrell Bank and a Russian installation on the Black Sea Coast. The results on 9th January 1966, showed that Venus rotated backwards (retrograde) ie the opposite way to Earth and most other planets, with a day 243.09 Earth days long.

Venus seems now to be upside down - since its rotation is in the opposite direction of Earth and most of the other planets, with just a 3 degree tilt in its axis. Venus also has a much slower rotation than that of Earth. Its day is longer that its year which is 224-5 Earth days. The rotation of Venus appears to have been slowed by its proximity to Earth - which with its Moon makes a larger gravitational pull than Venus does on Earth. When Venus is nearest the Earth on its orbit, the same side always faces the Earth. And the rotation period is close to the resonance period of the Earth-Venus system, that is 243.16 Earth days. So Venus is almost phase-locked to the Earth. Probing Venus The first probe to Venus was launched by Russia in 1959, only two years after they had launched the first space satellite, Sputnik. After many not very successful attempts, Venera 3 landed a capsule on the surface in 1965, but communication ceased immediately.

Venera 4 in 1967, also landed a capsule by parachute through the atmosphere, which transmitted for a short time, but did not survive on the surface which has a temperature hot enough to melt lead and an atmospheric pressure 90 times that on Earth. In 1969 Venera 5 and Venera 6 also sent back data but did not survive long on the surface. Venera 7 in 1970 did survive on the surface for a short time and transmitted data. Venera 8 aimed at the day side of Venus and sent back data for 50 minutes after landing. It had to survive temperatures of more than 10,000 degrees as it entered Venus's atmosphere. The surface temperature was recorded by Venera 7 as 748K ± 20 degrees. In 1975, Venera 9 and 10 were sent to Venus and landed at a distance of 2000 kilometres from each other.

The capsule of Venera 9 had been built to withstand the pressure of the atmosphere and temperatures up to 2,000 degrees, but still only survived 65 minutes after landing. It sent back the first pictures of the surface of Venus which was sufficiently light despite the permanent dense clouds, no extra lighting was needed. The rocks had shadows. Venera 10 was also successful in sending back pictures of the surface of Venus. Venera 11 and Venera 12, were launched to Venus in 1978. They sent back lots of data but not pictures. They found storms with lightning, volcanic activity and that only a very small percentage of light actually reached the surface through the clouds. Venera 13, and Venera 14, launched 1981, took soil samples. They found rocks were similar to Earth's, including basalt. There were high levels of uranium, thorium and potassium in the rocks. They transmitted colour television pictures back. The scenery looked yellow as the light looked yellow. Venera 15 and Venera 16 in 1983, mapped the surface of Venus with radar.

This enabled an atlas to be published of Venus. They found two-thirds of the surface is hilly, about a quarter is flat lowland and about one tenth, mountains. Vega 1 and Vega 2, passed Halley's comet in 1985 and took the first pictures from space of the comet before going on to Venus. There they dropped probes with balloons into the atmosphere to land onto the surface. The USA sent Mariner probes past Venus in the 1960s which sent back some data about the atmosphere. In 1978 they sent a Pioneer to orbit Venus with several small probes to collect data on the atmosphere of Venus. In 1989, the USA launched the Magellan probe to Venus via the shuttle Atlantis. It mapped Venus by radar and also collected data on the magnetic field. The surface features on Venus are named after goddesses, heroines and other famous women, and suggestions for names are welcomed. They must not be political. Venus was thought to have been similar to the Earth in its earliest history. The primordial crust formed. Was heavily bombarded and cratered.

Convection through the mantle caused by internal heating within the centre (from gravitational squeezing, radio-active decay....) deformed the outer crust which is thinner in low-lying areas (might be seas on Earth) and thicker in highlands (might have been continents on Earth). High mountain regions developed by uplifting and outflowing. The Ishtar Tierra mountains formed as a result of the uplift of the plateau and formation of Maxwell mountains. Low lying areas and craters became filled with lava. The shield in the Beta Regis area was formed before the mountain ridges along the fault which broke the surface of the shield. Tectonic activity with volcanic eruptions continues today. The mass of Venus's atmosphere is about one hundred times as much as the mass of the Earth's atmosphere and the density of the atmosphere at the surface is at least seventy times higher that on Earth. Being even higher in some places. Local temperatures and air pressures vary as they do on Earth except the temperature on Venus remains the same night and day, and there is little difference in the temperature from the equator to the poles. Venus's atmosphere is chiefly carbon dioxide (97%) and 2-3% Nitrogen. There are clouds of smelly hydrogen sulphide.

Sulphur seems to play the same role in Venus's meteorology as water does on Earth. These smelly clouds are high in the sky and low in density - like mist or fog. Only a small proportion of solar energy manages to reach the planet's surface but it is enough to maintain high temperatures because of the "greenhouse" effect. The Nasa pictures created from the Magellan radar data, have been criticised as giving a very false image of the surface of Venus. Although it was coloured in accordance with the colour photos from Venera, the sky which should be a yellowish fog, has been made completely black, and the surface features which are flattened under the pressure of Venus's heavy atmosphere, rather as features are under the sea on Earth, have been exaggerated in height, 20 times. A much more realistic reconstruction should have been made. It was thought that Venus may have been covered in water like the Earth, but being nearer the Sun this evaporated off, forming clouds which trapped the heat and made a greenhouse effect. Something like this could so easily have happened on Earth, so it was a cause for concern.

The thick atmosphere is the reason very small impact craters are not found on the surface, and many craters are elongated with black 'skid' marks, where the meteorite has been slowed by the atmosphere. The radar mapping by Magellan was completed in August 1993, when Magellan's orbit was changed to collect gravity data before it crashed onto the surface.The data received has shown that Venus, although apparently a twin of the Earth, has in fact had a very different history. Magellan showed long rivers of lava, flattened volcanos (like Sapa Mons in this picture) like mushroom tops, collapsed domes with cobweb-like cracks (graben), but no tectonics and volcanism like we have on Earth. What it did have, which has not been seen on any other world so far, was craters scattered all over the surface in the same way. Normally a world shows surfaces that craters reveal to be of different ages, as parts of the surface are changed and obliterated by tectonic and volcanic processes. But on Venus the surface was all the same age all over. This means that Venus completely resurfaced in one giant upheaval, in effect turning itself inside out, then went relatively quiet.

From the craters and other evidence this catastrophic event was dated to about 700 million years ago. If there had been water and life on Venus - and there may have been - see also - it might have been destroyed and it may have been then if not earlier, that Venus became the apparently lifeless, steamy, hot smelly (sulphurous) planet it is now. About 650 million years ago, there was a massive extinction event on Earth. It appears to have been associated with a massive movement of tectonic plates sending continents hurtling around the globe in the space of a few million years. 70 percent of the single celled life forms which then existed were destroyed, the climate became cold and Earth was covered by ice . Some life on Earth survived the extinction event 650 million years ago, evolved, and the first muli-cellular life forms appeared. The Vendian age now renamed Ediacarian . It is possible that the events on Earth and Venus are related. And that at one time Venus and Earth were very similar planets with seas, continents and perhaps Venus too had single celled life as on Earth.

Around 700 million years ago the Earth had just one large continent over the south pole - "Rodinia" - its breaking up was at least partly due to massive volcanic eruptions over vast areas (traps) -which was to lead to the glacial age. Venus is now very different from Earth. Earth has not swung upside down as Venus seems to have done at some time in the past, so it now appears to rotate backwards. Venus also rotates so slowly that its day is longer than its year - and is affected by the gravitational pull of Earth and Moon together, as the same side always faces Earth when they are close to each other on their orbits. Earth may have been saved from the fate of Venus by the presence of its large Moon - making a double body. The Moon affects the axial rotation of the Earth - it produces a wobble in the axial rotation, but at the same time prevents it tilting much further than the present 21.5 degrees. The Moon also speeded up the rotation of the Earth. This effect lessens as the Moon gradually drifts away from the Earth, but 650 million years ago the day on Earth was about a third shorter than now.

The regular tidal pull of the Moon also keeps the Earth's geology active - so the Earth's crust is in constant movement. Earth has a thin crust, continuously shifting and breaking up pushed by the hot convection currents deep in the Earth's fluid mantle. Information from Magellan suggested Venus is encased in a thick solid shell of crust and mantle perhaps about 50 km. thick. There are signs of upwelling and downwelling in vertical heat currents from the planet's centre. Hot plumes rising up are marked by volcanos, all over the planet. Small domes a few km. across are dotted all over the planet and also in dense swarms, and huge volcanos several kilometres across are usually found at the tops of broad rises. Another volcanic feature is unique to Venus. It is the corona. These are hundreds of kilometres across, heavily fractures and sometimes surrounded by a trench. They may have been caused by a hot volcanic plume rising from deep in the planet, lifting a circular region. This then cracks as it cools, relaxes, and drops back. Another peculiar feature are the steep-sided hills, like mushroom tops or "pancake domes".

They may be formed from thick lava that oozed onto the surface slowly through a central vent. There are also features that look just like rivers. One of these which is called Hildr, is longer than the River Nile, nearly 7,000 km. long. Life on Venus? Using data from the Russian Venera space missions and also the US Pioneer Venus and Magellan probes, researchers studying the high concentration of water droplets in the Venusian clouds found hydrogen sulphide and sulphur dioxide. These two gases react with each other, and are not seen in the same place unless something is producing them. Despite solar radiation and lightning - the atmosphere contains hardly any carbon monoxide, suggesting that something is removing the gas. "Bugs living in the Venusian clouds could be combining sulphur dioxide with carbon monoxide and possibly hydrogen sulphide or carbonyl sulphide in a metabolism similar to that of some early Earth bugs". The Transit of Venus and the Astronomical Unit When we look at Venus through a telescope we can only see a partially lit crescent. That is because when its fully lit side is facing us it is behind the Sun, and when its dark side is facing us, it is between us and the Sun.

It can only be seen then when it is directly in line of sight between us and the Sun, and appears as a dark spot traversing the Sun's surface. This is called a transit. Observations of the transit of Venus have been used to determine, not only the size of the Sun, but the distance of Venus, and the distance between us and the Sun, which is the astronomical unit. The Astronomical Unit (AU) is the mean radius of the Earth's orbit about the Sun. This is 150 million kilometres. 1 AU = 1.49578 x 10 metres. Edmund Halley recognized the importance of observing the transits of Mercury and Venus - the rare occasions when one of these planets gets in line of sight between the Earth and the Sun, and appeared to the observer, using a telescope as the lens of a camera obscura, (never look directly at the Sun through a telescope) as a black dot crossing the surface of the Sun.

In 1639, Jeremiah Horrocks (1618-41), and William Crabtree (1610-44) who were penfriends, were the first to use telescopes to observe the transit of Venus, which they found predicted in the astronomical tables of Philip von Lansberg (1561-1632). Horrocks, had recently graduated from university and was working as a private tutor. He set up his camera obscura type device in an upstairs bedroom. The eyepiece of the camera was shrouded by the curtained window, and the image was to project on marked out white card, which he had prepared and set up ready. But the day was cloudy and Horrocks was busy looking after the children. Luckily the sky cleared just in time. And Horrocks was able to see and record the transit. Crabtree was also able to observe the transit. In 1641, Horrocks died, aged 23, the day before he was to have visited Crabtree for the first time. Crabtree died in the Civil War.

By timing the exact moments that the planet entered and left the Sun's disk, from different places on Earth, it was thought possible, by using parallax, to determine the distance of the Earth from the Sun, and use that as a baseline, the Astronomical Unit, to find the distance of other objects in the Solar System, and the nearest stars. Once the distance of the Earth to the Sun was known, the comparative distances of other bodies in the solar System and nearby stars could be calculated. It would also be possible to determine the longitude of the position of the observer. For example observations of the transit of Mercury in 1677, were used to determine the longitude of Port Royal, Jamaica. This is because the transit would be seen differently from different places on Earth. Major international preparations were made for scientists (regardless of political differences or even war - there was war between Britain and France) to travel to remote parts of the world to observe the transits of Venus in 1761 and 1769.

They knew a similar opportunity would not reoccur again until 1874 and 1882 (the next transits were 2004 and still to come 2012). The astronomers had many adventures on their travels to their destinations in Canada, Tahiti, South Africa, Central Siberia, India, Mexico, and other places. The adventures of the astronomers who travelled to remote places in the 18th century to meaure the transit of Venus can be found in these books (and others have emerged in time for the next transits): Fernie: J. Donald, The Whisper and the Vision, the Voyages of the Astronomers, Toronto, 1976, his articles about the transits of Venus in the 18th century is online , and Ferris, Timothy, Coming of Age in the Milky Way, 1988, ISBN 0 09 9800500. The method was to time the moment Venus entered in front of the Sun's disk and the moment it left. These times will be different for each observer in each place.

The results were then collected together and from then the distance from the Earth to the Sun would be calculated. The results were disappointing. One reason was the time-keepers. Pendulum clocks were the most accurate at the time, and they had to be reassembled after arduous journeys. The other reason was that it was difficult to see the precise moment the transit began, there was a "black drop" effect. Astronomers rightly concluded this meant Venus had an atmosphere. In September 1959, there was the first attempt to find the AU by using radar. Radar signals were bounced off the surface of Venus. The radio telescope at Jodrell Bank was used first as the transmitter and then as the receiver for the echoes. This attempt failed. In April 1961 came a second international attempt. This used as well as Jodrell Bank (and R.V.Jones), equipment in the USSR, MIT near Boston USA, the JPL, Pasadena, California.

By measuring the time delay of the echo they found the distance of Venus and also that they had got the mean distance of the Earth to the Sun too small, and this was why they failed before to detect the echo, they had been looking in the wrong place. They now had more precise clocks - hydrogen masers. There was still a discrepancy of 60,000 km between the radar value of the AU and the best of the conventional values. Eventually the average radar value of 149,600,000 kilometres was accepted. Transit of Venus 8th June 2004 Here is my picture of it - taken 7.30 am from our back garden. Venus Express ESA project launched from a Soyuz-Fregat rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome delayed because of a launcher problem . Venus Express was launched 9th November 2005 . Venus Express is a follow on from the Mars Express mission. Many of the instruments on the mission are upgraded versions of those on the Mars Express platform. After a 153 day cruise to Venus the spacecraft entered Venusian orbit in April 2006.

Once it was captured by Venusian gravity, Venus Express took 5 days to manoeuvre into its operation orbit, looping around the poles of the planet. It is then to spend 500 days in orbit around Venus.

Question: What is the name given to the planet Venus when it appears in the West after sunset?
Answer: Evening Star