Venus

543 Words2 Pages

Venus is the second planet from the sun and the sixth largest. Scientists sometimes refer to it as the morning or evening star. It has an extremely slow rotation which means that its year is actually shorter than its day; one day on Venus is about two hundred and forty three Earth days, while one year is two hundred and twenty five Earth days (Exploration). The distance from the sun is 67,232,400 miles (Distance), being that close to the sun, Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system, the average temperature is 864 degrees Fahrenheit but it can get to over 900 degrees, which is hot enough to melt lead (Coffey). The size of Venus is very much like that of Earth, just a little bit smaller (Coffey…Size). The color of Venus is actually a bright white color, most of the yellowish orange pictures you see are false color images used to show the features of the surface (Cain). “Scientists say that no one really discovered Venus since it is visible to the naked eye”, due to it being the second brightest object in the sky (Discovery). So there isn’t an actual date for its discovery. In 1610 Galileo was the first to observe Venus, but ancient people were most likely aware that it was there because it is the first “star” you see before sunset and the last “star” you see before sunrise (Galileo). It is one of the most widely explored planets other than Earth. Venus was named after the Roman Goddess of love and beauty, Aphrodite. It is the only planet named after a female (Choi). Scientists believe that Venus formed the same way and around the same time as Earth and might have looked like Earth but since it is so close to the sun the water would have evaporated (Oxlade, 15). The atmosphere of Venus consists of carbon dioxide and thick t... ... middle of paper ... ...Geology, the Environment, and the Universe. Columbus, OH: McGraw-Hill Co.,Inc.,2013. Solar System Exploration-Planets. 6 March 2014. http://solarsystem.nasa.gov> 25 March 2014. The Planets and Their Moons. 2013. . 25 March 2014 Venus Earth’s Sister Planet. 14 March 2014. space/solar-system/venus-article/>. 25 March 2014 Venus Facts. 2014. . 26 March 2014 Oxlade, Chris. Mercury, Mars and the Other Inner Planets. The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc., 2008. Size of Venus. 19 December 2008. 27 March 2014. How Big is Venus?. 16 November 2012. 27 March 2014 The Color of Venus. 16 May 2008. 27 March 2014.

More about Venus

Open Document