Venus is the second furthest planet from the sun named after the roman goddess of love and is sometimes referred to as Earth’s sister, however while some similarities exist one could describe it as Earth’s evil twin. When the planet was named we knew very little about it apart from it’s consistent movement across the night sky which is hard to miss since it is the brightest object aside from the moon. It’s reliable orbit in the sky constitutes the name but in recent times we have found the solar systems second planet to be a completely inhospitable and an ultra-deadly environment.
Venus is nearly as big as Earth and has an equatorial diameter of 12,104 km, it also is believed to consist of a very similar make up with an iron core at the centre. It takes 225 days to orbit the sun which is similar to us however that is where the similarities end. The surface temperature is generally around 471 degrees C, the hottest in the solar system (much hotter than the closes planet to the sun: Mercury) with some scientists describing the heat as global warming on a massive extended scale. The extreme environment first discovered by the Russian probe Venera 1 way back in 1961 presents a fantastic scientific opportunity and as a result there has been a number of probes sent there since to investigate. Its a long journey but upon landing the life of a probe is very short because of the acidic atmosphere, extreme temperatures and crushing pressures which are greater than that of the deepest oceans here on Earth. Its clear that venus is a vision of hell with 1000’s of constantly active volcanoes as discovered by the European Space agency back in 2006.
This Venus documentary explores most of the knowledge we have gained today.
