Venus Wikipedia. Venus A real colour image of Venus taken by Mariner 1. The surface is obscured by thick sulfuric acid clouds. Designations. Pronunciation  listenAdjectives. Venusian or rarely Cytherean, Venerean. Solar Radiation Data Handbook Of Texas' title='Solar Radiation Data Handbook Of Texas' />Get the latest breaking news across the U. S. on ABCNews. com. Solar systems orbit the centre of their galaxies. Planets orbit stars. Moons orbit planets. Does anything orbit moons If not, why notScientists, the medical community and tech bloggers have been exhorting the public to only look at solar eclipses like the one on Monday with shielded glasses or. Comprehensive and meticulously documented facts about energy. Learn about the science of energy, the pros and cons of different energy technologies, public policies. Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224. Earth days. It has the longest rotation period 243 days of any planet in the Solar System and. Orbital characteristics24Epoch. J2. 00. 0Aphelion. AU7. 01. 11. 08. 93. Perihelion. 70. 11. AU7. 01. 11. 07. 47. AU7. 01. 11. 08. 20. Eccentricity. 0. 0. Venus solar day. 58. Inclination. 76. 6. Satellites. None. Physical characteristics. Mean radius. 70. 06. Earths. Flattening. Earths. Volume. 70. Earths. Mass. 70. Earths. 70. 03. 52. Equatorial rotation velocity. Albedo4. 991. Atmosphere. MPaComposition by volumeDefining the rotation as retrograde, as done by NASA space missions and the USGS, puts Ishtar Terra in the northern hemisphere and makes the axial tilt 2. Following the right hand rule for prograde rotation puts Ishtar Terra in the southern hemisphere and makes the axial tilt 1. Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 2. Earth days. 1. 2 It has the longest rotation period 2. Solar System and rotates in the opposite direction to most other planets. It has no natural satellites. It is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty. It is the second brightest natural object in the night sky after the Moon, reaching an apparent magnitude of 4. Orbiting within Earths orbit, Venus is an inferior planet and never appears to venture far from the Sun its maximum angular distance from the Sun elongation is 4. Venus is a terrestrial planet and is sometimes called Earths sister planet because of their similar size, mass, proximity to the Sun, and bulk composition. It is radically different from Earth in other respects. It has the densest atmosphere of the four terrestrial planets, consisting of more than 9. The atmospheric pressure at the planets surface is 9. Earth, or roughly the pressure found 9. Earth. Venus is by far the hottest planet in the Solar System, with a mean surface temperature of 7. K 4. 62 C 8. 63 F, even though Mercury is closer to the Sun. Venus is shrouded by an opaque layer of highly reflective clouds of sulfuric acid, preventing its surface from being seen from space in visible light. It may have had water oceans in the past,1. The water has probably photodissociated, and the free hydrogen has been swept into interplanetary space by the solar wind because of the lack of a planetary magnetic field. Venuss surface is a dry desertscape interspersed with slab like rocks and is periodically resurfaced by volcanism. As one of the brightest objects in the sky, Venus has been a major fixture in human culture for as long as records have existed. It has been made sacred to gods of many cultures, and has been a prime inspiration for writers and poets as the morning star and evening star. Venus was the first planet to have its motions plotted across the sky, as early as the second millennium BC. As the closest planet to Earth, Venus has been a prime target for early interplanetary exploration. It was the first planet beyond Earth visited by a spacecraft Mariner 2 in 1. Venera 7 in 1. 97. Venuss thick clouds render observation of its surface impossible in visible light, and the first detailed maps did not emerge until the arrival of the Magellan orbiter in 1. Plans have been proposed for rovers or more complex missions, but they are hindered by Venuss hostile surface conditions. Physical characteristics. Size comparison with Earth. Venus is one of the four terrestrial planets in the Solar System, meaning that it is a rocky body like Earth. It is similar to Earth in size and mass, and is often described as Earths sister or twin. The diameter of Venus is 1. Earthsand its mass is 8. Earths. Conditions on the Venusian surface differ radically from those on Earth because its dense atmosphere is 9. Geography. The Venusian surface was a subject of speculation until some of its secrets were revealed by planetary science in the 2. Venera landers in 1. The surface was mapped in detail by Magellan in 1. The ground shows evidence of extensive volcanism, and the sulfur in the atmosphere may indicate that there have been some recent eruptions. About 8. 0 of the Venusian surface is covered by smooth, volcanic plains, consisting of 7. Two highland continents make up the rest of its surface area, one lying in the planets northern hemisphere and the other just south of the equator. The northern continent is called Ishtar Terra, after Ishtar the Babylonian goddess of love, and is about the size of Australia. Maxwell Montes, the highest mountain on Venus, lies on Ishtar Terra. Its peak is 1. 1 km 7 mi above the Venusian average surface elevation. The southern continent is called Aphrodite Terra, after the Greek goddess of love, and is the larger of the two highland regions at roughly the size of South America. A network of fractures and faults covers much of this area. The absence of evidence of lava flow accompanying any of the visible calderas remains an enigma. The planet has few impact craters, demonstrating that the surface is relatively young, approximately 3. Venus has some unique surface features in addition to the impact craters, mountains, and valleys commonly found on rocky planets. Among these are flat topped volcanic features called farra, which look somewhat like pancakes and range in size from 2. These features are volcanic in origin. Most Venusian surface features are named after historical and mythological women. Exceptions are Maxwell Montes, named after James Clerk Maxwell, and highland regions Alpha Regio, Beta Regio, and Ovda Regio. The latter three features were named before the current system was adopted by the International Astronomical Union, the body which oversees planetary nomenclature. The longitudes of physical features on Venus are expressed relative to its prime meridian. The original prime meridian passed through the radar bright spot at the centre of the oval feature Eve, located south of Alpha Regio. After the Venera missions were completed, the prime meridian was redefined to pass through the central peak in the crater Ariadne. Surface geology. False colour image of Maat Mons with a vertical exaggeration of 2. Much of the Venusian surface appears to have been shaped by volcanic activity. Venus has several times as many volcanoes as Earth, and it has 1. The only volcanic complex of this size on Earth is the Big Island of Hawaii. This is not because Venus is more volcanically active than Earth, but because its crust is older. Earths oceanic crust is continually recycled by subduction at the boundaries of tectonic plates, and has an average age of about 1. Venusian surface is estimated to be 3. Several lines of evidence point to ongoing volcanic activity on Venus. During the Soviet Venera program, the Venera 9 orbiter obtained spectroscopic evidence of lightning on Venus,3. Venera 1. 2 descent probe obtained additional evidence of lightning and thunder. The European Space Agencys Venus Express in 2. Venus. 4. 04. 1 One possibility is that ash from a volcanic eruption was generating the lightning. Another piece of evidence comes from measurements of sulfur dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere, which dropped by a factor of 1. This may mean that levels had been boosted several times by large volcanic eruptions. In 2. 00. 8 and 2. Venus Express, in the form of four transient localized infrared hot spots within the rift zone Ganis Chasma,4. Maat Mons. Three of the spots were observed in more than one successive orbit. These spots are thought to represent lava freshly released by volcanic eruptions. The actual temperatures are not known, because the size of the hot spots could not be measured, but are likely to have been in the 8. K 5. 278. 27 C 9. F range, relative to a normal temperature of 7. K 4. 67 C 8. 72 F. This fully transparent solar cell could make every window and screen a power source. Back in August 2. Michigan State University created a fully transparent solar concentrator, which could turn any window or sheet of glass like your smartphones screen into a photovoltaic solar cell. Unlike other transparent solar cells that weve reported on in the past, this one really is transparent, as you can see in the photos throughout this story. According to Richard Lunt, who led the research at the time, the team was confident the transparent solar panels can be efficiently deployed in a wide range of settings, from tall buildings with lots of windows or any kind of mobile device that demands high aesthetic quality like a phone or e reader. Now Ubiquitous Energy, an MIT startup we first reported on in 2. Lunt cofounded the company and remains assistant professor of chemical engineering and materials science at Michigan State University. Essentially, what theyre doing is instead of shrinking the components, theyre changing the way the cell absorbs light. The cell selectively harvests the part of the solar spectrum we cant see with our eye, while letting regular visible light pass through. Scientifically, a transparent solar panel is something of an oxymoron. Solar cells, specifically the photovoltaic kind, make energy by absorbing photons sunlight and converting them into electrons electricity. If a material is transparent, however, by definition it means that all of the light passes through the medium to strike the back of your eye. Python Save As Matlab .Mat File there. This is why previous transparent solar cells have actually only been partially transparent and, to add insult to injury, they usually they cast a colorful shadow too. The organic salts absorb UV and infrared, and emit infrared processes that occur outside of the visible spectrum, so that it appears transparent. To get around this limitation, the Michigan State researchers use a slightly different technique for gathering sunlight. Instead of trying to create a transparent photovoltaic cell which is nigh impossible, they use a transparent luminescent solar concentrator TLSC. The TLSC consists of organic salts that absorb specific non visible wavelengths of ultraviolet and infrared light, which they then luminesce glow as another wavelength of infrared light also non visible. This emitted infrared light is guided to the edge of plastic, where thin strips of conventional photovoltaic solar cell convert it into electricity. Research paper DOI 1. Near Infrared Harvesting Transparent Luminescent Solar ConcentratorsIf you look closely, you can see a couple of black strips along the edges of plastic block. Otherwise, though, the active organic material and thus the bulk of the solar panel is highly transparent. Read Solar singlet fission bends the laws of physics to boost solar power efficiency by 3. The prototype TLSC currently has an efficiency of around 1, but they think 1. Non transparent luminescent concentrators which bathe the room in colorful light max out at around 7. On their own these arent huge figures, but on a larger scale every window in a house or office block the numbers quickly add up. And while were probably not talking about a technology that can keep your smartphone or tablet running indefinitely, replacing your devices display with a TLSC could net you a few more minutes or hours of usage on a single battery charge. It opens a lot of area to deploy solar energy in a non intrusive way, Lunt said in an interview with Michigan States Today blog. It can be used on tall buildings with lots of windows or any kind of mobile device that demands high aesthetic quality like a phone or e reader. Ultimately we want to make solar harvesting surfaces that you do not even know are there. The researchers and Ubiquitous Energy are confident that the technology can be scaled all the way from large industrial and commercial applications, down to consumer devices, while remaining affordable. So far, one of the larger barriers to large scale adoption of solar power is the intrusive and ugly nature of solar panels obviously, if we can produce large amounts of solar power from sheets of glass and plastic that look like normal sheets of glass and plastic, then that would be incredible. For more, read How do solar cells work Sebastian Anthony wrote the original version of this article. It has since been updated with new information.