Venus

Joe Landis

Block 1

Mr. Craft

Research Report

Joe Landis i

The Planet Venus iii

Introduction iii

The Surface iii

The Atmosphere iii

Volcanoes v

Magellan Mission v

Work Cited Page vii

The Planet Venus

Introduction

The planet we know as Venus is the second planet from the Sun in our solar system. The Planet is also the brightest if we were looking at it from earth. According to a some information I have found it “is the third brightest celestial object in the sky (after the Sun and Moon)…[And] is also one of the few bodies in our Solar System that rotates east to west (retrograde) (http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hanger/9188/venu.html).” It takes Venus around two hundred and twenty-four days on Earth for it to complete one full rotation. This makes Venus the planet with the slowest rotation in our Solar System. Venus’s year is shorter than its day being only two hundred and twenty-five days on Earth. Venus is also the Planet that comes the closest to our planet Earth. Venus comes about twenty-five million miles or fifteen million kilometers from the Earth’s surface. “Venus has a thick atmosphere and extreme atmospheric pressure, 92 times the Earth’s pressure. The clouds are composed primarily of sulfur compounds, most notably sulfuric acid (Http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hanger/9188/venu.html).”

The Surface

We gathered data from a satellite we sent to Venus showing us that Venus is a highly Volcanically active planet. With more and more satellite images being produced we see that the surface of the planet is changing. We have found that some Volcanoes that were on Venus some odd years ago have become dormant and new Volcanoes have been made, Thus proving the Plates under Venus’s surface are still moving and the planet is not dead; actually, it is very alive! Venus has many Mountains and Volcanoes on its surface. “There are also several board depressions: Atlanta Planitia, Guinevere Planitia, Lavinia Planitia. There two large highland areas: Istar Terra in the northern hemisphere (about the size of Australia) and Aphrodite Terra along the equator (about the size of South America). The interior of Ishtar consists mainly of a high plateau, Lakshmi Planum, which is surrounded by the highest mountains on Venus including the enormous Maxwell Montes (Http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/nineplanets/nineplanets/venus.html).”

The Atmosphere

I copied the following chart to show the comparison of the atmosphere between Earth and Venus.

(Davison E. Soper, Institute of Theoretical Science, University of Oregon, Eugene OR 97403 USA soper@bovine.uoregon.edu)

Earth Venus

N_2 0.79 3

O_2 0.20 < 0.002

Ar 0.01 small

CO_2 0.0003 86

H_2O ~ 0.02 ~ 0.01

Total 1.00 90

--------------------------

H_2O 3 km 30 cm

liquid

+ vapor

Clouds (50 to 70 km above surface) H_2SO_4 (sulfuric acid).

(http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~soper/Venus/atmosphere.html)

Because of all the gasses in Venus’s atmosphere it has been named one of the most poisonous planets in our solar system. “It is also the hottest planet because clouds on Venus trap the suns energy causing a greenhouse effect far worse than anything we could imagine on our planet. (http://www.sofweb.vic.edu.au/Steps/students/3-4Years/venus.htm). The atmosphere on Venus is made up mostly of Carbon Dioxide. It is almost impossible to look through the atmosphere of Venus because of its layers of clouds which