Venus is the second closest planet to the sun and is almost as big as the earth. Oddly Venus rotates backwards in relationship to most of the planets giving it a sunrise in the west and a sun set in the east. And speaking of rotation, one day on Venus lasts a long time. 243 Earth days, but it has a comparable shorter year 225 earth days.
It’s a rocky planet, or a terrestrial planet. Venus’ surface is a cratered and volcanic landscape. with a very dense and thick atmosphere. That “air” is primarily carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrogen (N2), with clouds of sulfuric acid (H2SO4) droplets. Which is very toxic to most things that we consider living.
Venus is pretty ordinary. . no moons and no rings. But HOT! It gets temperatures of almost 480 degrees Celsius (900 degrees Fahrenheit) Which is too hot for life as we know it.
It’s a cruel harsh world of dim light, super heated air from run away greenhouse effect and toxic air. The super heated world has temperatures hot enough to melt lead. Images taken below the clouds reveal volcanoes and deformed mountains. Unfortunately, the planet is so hot that probes make it down and take a few images before shutting down due to the extreme heat rendering the probes useless.
Venus has a small magnetic field which was discovered in 1967, by Venera 4. The Magnetic field is much weaker than earth’s and is induced by an interaction between the ionosphere and the solar wind. This is a bit different than say Earth’s which is produced by the internal dynamo in the core. Venus’s small induced magnetosphere provides negligible protection to the atmosphere against cosmic radiation. This radiation may result in cloud-to-cloud lightning discharges.
The weak magnetosphere around Venus means that the solar wind is interacting directly with its outer atmosphere. Here, ions of hydrogen and oxygen are being created by the dissociation of neutral molecules from ultraviolet radiation. The solar wind then supplies energy that gives some of these ions sufficient velocity to escape Venus’s gravity field. This erosion process results in a steady loss of low-mass hydrogen, helium, and oxygen ions, whereas higher-mass molecules, such as carbon dioxide, are more likely to be retained. Atmospheric erosion by the solar wind probably led to the loss of most of Venus’s water during the first billion years after it formed. The erosion has increased the ratio of higher-mass deuterium to lower-mass hydrogen in the upper atmosphere by 150 times compared to the ratio in the lower atmosphere.[1]
Photographing
Venus in a 6″ Celestron SCT
I was only able to get one photo. It’s a tough planet to get, Mercury is just as tough for several reasons. First off you can’t get a full image due to it being inside the orbit of earth. As explained in the next image:
Earth looks very similar if viewed from Mars, for the same reasons. I didn’t really enjoy photoing this planet, it’s only visibly low in the horizon at either sunset or sunrise, due to it’s location in the solar system nearer the sun. This makes it a very small window to get the images. Mercury is even harder. I don’t think I’ll revisit this due to my current location and there being an abundant of trees. But hey at least now I can say I saw it.
I only recall I used the Celestron 6se and the Orion StarShoot Deep Space Video Camera II, I hadn’t purchased the neximager5 which I think might be interesting to try it with. I don’t recall the settings as I hadn’t started logging notes just yet. This is the very reason and my chase of Jupiter that caused me to start logging notes. I couldn’t remember the settings I had used and as I jumped from planets to stars to dso’s I would forget the settings. I’ve used them so much now I remember what to use when. I was also not as good with Registax as I am now and as versed in capturing images with the cameras. It might be worth the look with the neximager5, I just didn’t enjoy this planet as much, it’s just a real hassle to me. Some astronomers enjoy chasing it and seeing what phases they can get.
Data
Discovered By
Known by the Ancients
Date of Discovery
Unknown
Orbit Size Around Sun (semi-major axis)
Metric: 108,209,475 km
English: 67,238,251 miles
Scientific Notation: 1.0820948 x 108 km (7.2333566 x 10-1 A.U.)
By Comparison: 0.723 x Earth
Perihelion (closest)
Metric: 107,476,170 km
English: 66,782,596 miles
Scientific Notation: 1.07476 x 108 km (7.184 x 10-1 A.U.)
By Comparison: 0.731 x Earth
Aphelion (farthest)
Metric: 108,942,780 km
English: 67,693,905 miles
Scientific Notation: 1.08943 x 108 km (0.7282 A.U.)
By Comparison: 0.716 x Earth
Sidereal Orbit Period (Length of Year)
0.61519726 Earth years
224.70 Earth days
By Comparison: 0.615 x Earth
Orbit Circumference
Metric: 679,892,378 km
English: 422,465,538 miles
Scientific Notation: 6.799 x 108 km
By Comparison: 0.723 x Earth
Average Orbit Velocity
Metric: 126,074 km/h
English: 78,339 mph
Scientific Notation: 3.5020 x 104 m/s
By Comparison: 1.176 x Earth
Orbit Eccentricity
0.00677672
By Comparison: 0.406 x Earth
Orbit Inclination
3.39 degrees
Equatorial Inclination to Orbit
177.3 degrees (retrograde rotation)
By Comparison: 7.56 x Earth
Mean Radius
Metric: 6,051.8 km
English: 3,760.4 miles
Scientific Notation: 6.0518 x 103 km
By Comparison: 0.9499 x Earth
Equatorial Circumference
Metric: 38,024.6 km
English: 23,627.4 miles
Scientific Notation: 3.80246 x 104 km
By Comparison: 0.9499 x Earth’s
Volume
Metric: 928,415,345,893 km3
English: 222,738,686,740 mi3
Scientific Notation: 9.28415 x 1011 km3
By Comparison: 0.857 x Earth’s
Mass
Metric: 4,867,320,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg
Scientific Notation: 4.8673 x 1024 kg
By Comparison: 0.815 x Earth
Density
Metric: 5.243 g/cm3
By Comparison: Comparable to the average density of the Earth.
Surface Area
Metric: 460,234,317 km2
English: 177,697,463 square miles
Scientific Notation: 4.6023 x 108 km2
By Comparison: 0.902 x Earth
Surface Gravity
Metric: 8.87 m/s2
English: 29.1 ft/s2
By Comparison: If you weigh 100 pounds on Earth, you would weigh 91 pounds on Venus.
Six Alberts Astronomy & Astrophotography 