There are a few facts about Venus you should probably know before going there. Venus is by no means the most hospitable planet you could visit, although for many centuries it had been looked upon as Earth's twin, or sister planet. After all, Venus has clouds, one reason why it shines so brightly in the sky, and it is our closest neighbor in the solar system. It is closer to the Sun, so you'd expect it to be warmer, like a perpetual summer. Warmer, yes. How much warmer? Quite a bit. But it has only been in recent years that the true nature of our nearest neighbor in space has come into focus, and it is an unusual and interesting nature indeed.

Some Basics About The Planet - The first facts about Venus you'd likely be interested are where it's located, how far it is from us, when it was discovered, and who named it. Venus is the second rock from the Sun, only tiny Mercury is closer. Its orbit around the Sun is close to, though not quite, a perfect circle. The greatest distance Venus travels away from the Sun is 67 million miles; the closest is 66 million miles. So, for all practical purposes, its distance from the sun is nearly a constant. By comparison, the Earth is on the average just over 90 million miles from the sun. At its closest, Venus comes to within about 25 million miles of the Earth.

Since Venus, like Mercury, is closer to the sun than us, it always appears fairly close to the sun in the sky. Of course we can only see it in the night sky, but when we do it is what we call either the Morning Star, or the Evening Star. The same could be said for Mercury, except it is so close to the sun we can only observe it at twilight, plus we have to know where to look. Mercury is seldom if ever visible in the night sky. Venus has been known since ancient times, so no one really knows who “discovered “it, if discovered is indeed the right term. The planet is named after the Roman goddess Venus, the goddess of love and beauty. Fitting for a planet that was supposed to be our sister. If the Greeks had named the planet instead of the Romans, we would probably call it Aphrodite, their goddess of love.

How To Tell The Days And Weeks - The next set of facts about Venus relate to its travel around the sun, and its rotation, and already things start getting a little unusual. If you were to spend some time on Venus (and you can't, but we'll get to that in a bit) you'd notice that one day is equal to 243 earth days in time, as the planet rotates about its axis very slowly. It also rotates in the opposite direct than is the case here on Earth, called a retrograde rotation. That means you'd see the sun rise in the West and set in the East. Venus completes its journey around the Sun every 226 days. A little math indicates that a day on Venus is therefore longer than a year on Venus, by Venus' standards anyway. The Venus calendar, if there were such a thing, would look very different from ours to say the least!

Global Warming With A Vengeance - Now that you have the time difference figured out, and are ready to depart, you should to know a few more facts about Venus to see if you really want to go there. Let's start with the cloud cover, whose reflected sunlight makes Venus appear so bright in the night sky. Those clouds are so thick we can't see the surface of the planet, except by radar mapping, or by landing on the surface. Not only are the clouds thick, but they largely consist of droplets of sulfuric acid. That's the first hint that this planet may not be such a hospitable place after all. The cloud cover begins at approximately 30 miles above the surface. Curiously, although the planet rotates about its axis once every 243 days, the clouds travel around the planet at a speed that allows them to make the complete trip in about 4 days. That suggests some very high winds, in the upper atmosphere at least. That's true, although at around 190 mph it is not too different from our own jet stream. At the surface, the winds are believed to be much lower, perhaps not much more than gentle breezes. The thick cloud cover would prevent a visitor on the surface from seeing much sunshine, or moonlight if Venus had a moon, which it doesn't. (continued...)