What do venus look like

Even though Mercury is closer to the Sun, Venus is the hottest planet in our solar system. Its thick atmosphere is full of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, and it has clouds of sulfuric acid. The atmosphere traps heat, making it feel like a furnace on the surface. In addition to being extremely hot, Venus is unusual because it spins in the opposite direction of Earth and most other planets. It also has a very slow rotation making its day longer than its year.

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This year, the minimum extent of Arctic sea ice dropped to 1. Measuring 7, miles across, Venus is roughly the same diameter as our home planet. It also has a similar structure, sporting a rocky surface and an iron core, although the planet doesn't rotate fast enough to generate an Earth-like magnetic field.

Thousands of volcanoes dot Venus' surface, some of which may still be active. Volcanic rock from cooled lava covers most of its surface—the oldest of which dates back some million years. Many mountains also rise into Venusian skies. Its largest, dubbed Maxwell Montes, stands 36, feet tall. The processes driving the formation of this network of formations is unusual, however. Venus doesn't appear to harbor a churning seismic engine like that on Earth, which drives our bumper-car network of tectonic plates.

Yet the planet does appear to have a spidery network of breaks in its surface, hinting at an entirely new type of plate tectonics. Scientists suspect that for up to two billion years after it formed, the planet may have even been habitable—harboring liquid oceans on its surface. Fascination with what drove that transition from happy to hellish has led many scientists to campaign for more robotic visits to Venus. Venus' dense cloud cover has benefits for us Earthlings.

It reflects the sun's rays, making the planet the brightest in the night sky. It's often called the morning star or evening star because its bright, steady glow persists either around sunrise or sunset. Ancient peoples spotted these dazzling points in the sky and believed them to be two different objects, one that glows in the morning and another that glows in the evening. Similar to Mercury, Venus can occasionally be seen making a lazy trip across the sun's face, known as a transit.

But while Mercury zips across the sun every 13 to 14 years, Venus transits are much more rare. The planet's orbit is almost a perfect circle but is slightly tipped relative to Earth's path around our star. This means it's incredibly hard for the sun, Venus, and Earth to align in the right way. Top things to do. Accessible astronomy guides Let our practical astronomy guides, approved by Royal Observatory astronomers, help you navigate the night sky.

The perfect companions for a night of stargazing. The Planisphere is an easy-to-use practical tool helps any astronomers identify the constellations and stars for every day of the year Buy Now. Special Price. Sky-Watcher Skyhawk Telescope. Venus, the third brightest object after the Sun and Moon, was named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty. Persistent, dark streaks appear. Scientists are so far unable to explain why these streaks remain stubbornly intact, even amid hurricane-force winds.

They also have the odd habit of absorbing ultraviolet radiation. The most likely explanations focus on fine particles, ice crystals, or even a chemical compound called iron chloride. Although it's much less likely, another possibility considered by scientists who study astrobiology is that these streaks could be made up of microbial life, Venus-style.

These handy chemical cloaks would also absorb potentially damaging ultraviolet light and re-radiate it as visible light. There is much, it would seem, that she can teach us.

Our nearness to Venus is a matter of perspective. The planet is nearly as big around as Earth — 7, miles 12, kilometers across, versus 7, miles 12, kilometers for Earth. From Earth, Venus is the brightest object in the night sky after our own Moon.

The ancients, therefore, gave it great importance in their cultures, even thinking it was two objects: a morning star and an evening star. At its nearest to Earth, Venus is some 38 million miles about 61 million kilometers distant. One more trick of perspective: how Venus looks through binoculars or a telescope.

The complete cycle, however, new to full, takes days, while our Moon takes just a month. And it was this perspective, the phases of Venus first observed by Galileo through his telescope, that provided the key scientific proof for the Copernican heliocentric nature of the Solar System. Spending a day on Venus would be quite a disorienting experience — that is, if your ship or suit could protect you from temperatures in the range of degrees Fahrenheit Celsius.

For another, because of the planet's extremely slow rotation, sunrise to sunset would take Earth days. And by the way, the Sun would rise in the west and set in the east, because Venus spins backward compared to Earth. In winter, the tilt means the rays are less direct. No such luck on Venus: Its very slight tilt is only three degrees, which is too little to produce noticeable seasons. A critical question for scientists who search for life among the stars: How do habitable planets get their start?

The close similarities of early Venus and Earth, and their very different fates, provide a kind of test case for scientists who study planet formation.

Similar size, similar interior structure, both harboring oceans in their younger days. Yet one is now an inferno, while the other is the only known world — so far — to play host to abundant life. The factors that set these planets on almost opposite paths began, most likely, in the swirling disk of gas and dust from which they were born.