A portion of western Eistla Regio on Venus.
Venus shines bright in the night sky! Sister planet. Nearest neighbor. Goddess of love. How appealing the planet Venus sounds! But the strange cloudy world is actually a land of paradox and horror.
Venus’ Oddities
Few who gaze longingly at Venus are aware of the planet’s oddities.
- Venus’ surface never budges from about 850°F, day and night.
- The air is suffocatingly dense, packed with 50 times greater pressure than a pressure cooker.
- Its atmosphere provides no oxygen whatsoever.
- Venus’ day is longer than its year. Venus spins on its axis in 243 Earth-days but orbits the Sun in 225 Earth-days.
- Its clouds are made of white sulfuric acid. Because of this, Venus is deceivingly reflective as a mirror; fully 76 percent of the sunlight gets bounced away from the shiniest planet in our solar system.
- Beneath clouds of concentrated acid droplets lies clear compressed air that distorts everything into fun-house-mirror images.
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Interestingly, the Venusian surface is brightly lit despite being eternally overcast. With illumination that equals Earth’s on a cloudy day, even inexpensive disposable cameras would take correctly exposed photos there, a situation encountered on no other planet.
Of course, no budding photographer or human being is likely to go to Venus. Ever. It’s touching that we named the most luminous “star” after the love goddess. For all eternity, our nearest planet—that dazzling beacon in the western sky—will tantalize with a warning label: Look but don’t touch.
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Sometimes you say Venus & Mars are planets & other times you say they are stars. What are they? I enjoy reading The Old Farmers Almanac emails & have learned so much. Thanks muchly for all the interesting info. Janice Malovich
Venus and Mars are planets, but are sometimes colloquially called “stars” simply because they resemble the bright stars in our night sky. Additionally, Venus has been traditionally nicknamed the “evening star” or “morning star” due to its occasional appearance during those times.
My Tom Corbett, Space Cadet book from my childhood, "The Revolt On Venus" told of Tom, Astro and Roger hunting T-Rex's on Venus.
They couldn't have? What a spoiler!
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