30 Amazing and Interesting Facts about Venus | Amazing Facts 4U
- Venus is often called Earth’s twin because it is the closest planet in size to Earth. Scientists estimate the diameter of Venus at about 7,520 miles, making it approximately 400 miles smaller in diameter than Earth.
- Venus is the second planet from the sun and the closest planet to Earth. The distance between Venus and Earth varies from 23.7 million miles when the planets are closest together to 162 million miles when they are farthest apart.
- The planet was named Venus after the Roman goddess of beauty and love. Venus is the only planet in the Solar System to be named after a female figure.
- Geologists believe that Venus once had large bodies of water on its surface, similar to those on Earth, which dried up approximately 300 million years ago as the sun began emitting greater amounts of solar energy.
- The surface conditions of Venus are very hostile as the planet’s surface is very hot and dry and contains no liquid water, due to extremely high surface temperatures.
- The average temperature on Venus’ surface is about 870° Fahrenheit (465° Centigrade) , making it the hottest planet in the solar system and hotter than most ovens.
- Because Venus is only slightly tilted on its axis, it has no real seasonal variation in temperature as does Earth. it is hot all the time.
- Venus has a constant, high-speed wind that carries its clouds on a complete trip around the planet every four Earth days.
- Amazingly ancient astronomers called Venus both Phosphorous and Hesperus, mistakenly believing that the object visible in the morning and evening were two separate celestial bodies.
- While the equatorial diameter of Earth is 27 miles greater than its diameter measured from pole to pole, the two diameters for Venus are virtually the same, making the planet an almost perfect sphere.
- Venus travels around the sun in a nearly circular orbit taking about 225 Earth days to travel completely around the sun, compared to Earth’s 365 days.
- With its faster orbit around the sun, Venus overtakes Earth every 584 Earth days, changing from an evening star to a morning star and then vice versa.
- Venus and Mercury are the only two planets in the solar system that do not have any moons orbiting around them.
- The fact is Venus is one of only two planets that rotates on its axis clockwise from east to west. The only other planet to do so is Uranus.
- Amazing fact is that Venus rotates very slowly on its axis taking 243 days to make a complete rotation. The result is that a day on Venus is longer than its year.
- When seen from Earth, Venus is brighter than any other planet or any star in the sky. Sometimes it is the first planet or star visible in the western sky at night and at other times it is the last planet or star visible in the morning.
- Venus, the brightest of all the planets, can be so bright that on a moonless night, the planet can actually cast shadows on Earth.
- Venus can appear so bright that a pilot aboard an Air Canada flight in January 2011 actually mistook the dazzling planet for an oncoming aircraft. The pilot sent his plane into an emergency dive to avoid a midair collision with what investigators later determined was Venus, which was still safely millions of miles away.
- 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.
- Venus is surrounded by thick clouds consisting of mercury, ferric chloride hydrocarbons and mainly sulphuric acid. These clouds create the most corrosive acid rain found anywhere in our solar system.
- No visible light can penetrate to Venus surface and We are unable to view the planet’s features through telescopes. Most of the knowledge about Venus’ surface has been gained through space probes.
- Because the large masses of clouds never clear from Venus’ skies, neither Earth nor the sun is ever visible from the planet’s surface.
- Approximately 65% of Venus’ surface is covered in flat, smooth plains, and the remaining 35% is made up of six mountainous regions. The highest mountain range Maxwell is about seven miles high and 540 miles long.
- The atmosphere of Venus is heavier than the atmosphere of any other planet. It is made up primarily of carbon dioxide (96.5 %) and exerts roughly 90 times more pressure than Earth’s atmosphere which is the same as the water pressure on Earth about half a mile (1 km) under the ocean.
- Venus’ high surface temperature is a result of the greenhouse effect as a result of the large clouds of sulfuric acid surrounding the planet and its thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide.
- Nearly all of the radiant energy from the sun that enters the atmosphere is trapped and held at the planet’s surface.
- The force of gravity on Venus is about 88 % compared to earth. Due to its smaller size and lower density, Venus’ mass is about 80% that of Earth.
- Venus was first observed from space on December 14, 1962, when an unmanned U.S. spacecraft Mariner 2 passed within 21,600 miles of the planet after traveling through space for 3½ months. It was the first of all the planets other than earth to be seen from space.
- The first spacecraft to successfully land on Venus was the Soviet spaceship Venera 7, which reached the planet’s surface on December 15, 1970. The Soviet Venera 3 had crashed into the planet in 1966.
- Venus Express spacecraft was launched by the European Space Agency in November 2005 to explore the venus surface.
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