Ring Around The Planet Venus
Venus is the second planet from our Star, the Sun, as well as the planet nearest to Earth.
Possessing a rocky composition like our own planet, Venus is also almost the same size--and the obvious similarities between what turned out to be two very different worlds, caused some earlier astronomers to designate Venus as "Earth's twin.
" Alas, later scientific investigations into the matter revealed that if Venus is "Earth's twin, it is an evil one.
Subject to a devastating runaway greenhouse effect, Venus has an eerie red glowing surface that is hot enough to melt lead, and is veiled by dense, thick, heavy, and deadly clouds.
In November 2013, a trio of planetary scientists from The Open University and the University of Central Lancashire in the UK, confirmed that a ring of dust circles our Sun in the orbit of this weird sister planet of our own world.
The scientists used data derived from NASA's twin STEREO probes to confirm the existence of this dusty ring.
Astronomers have known for a very long time that a dust cloud exists throughout our entire Solar System ranging from our Star to the Main Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter.
This enormous cloud is called the Zodiacal Cloud, and it is composed of interplanetary dust.
Some astronomers have come to realize, over the past several decades, that some of the dust bouncing around in the Zodiacal Cloud can be snared into the orbit of a planet by the relentless pull of that planet's gravitational embrace.
Our Earth wanders through just such a dusty ring--and it was discovered about two decades ago.
Twenty years before that, probes dispatched into Space by the Soviet Union sent back evidence that the same kind of dusty ring also exists in Venus's path around our Sun.
Alas, information derived from those early probes wasn't sufficiently strong to prove that the dusty ring really was there.
Venus is a brilliant and beautiful "evening star" in the twilight of a late Autumn dusk.
It also has phases like Earth's Moon that are visible to sky-watchers who gaze at it through their telescopes.
On a clear Fall twilight, Venus is the first planet that observers can spot--it is even visible before the Sun has set.
As Venus wanders its way around our Sun inside our planet's orbit, it alternates regularly from evening to morning sky and back again.
The lovely world, that glitters like a "diamond in the sky," spends about 91/2 months as a "morning star"--and about the same length of time as an "evening star.
" This behavior caused some ancient astronomers to wrongly think that they were observing two different "wandering stars.
" They named the "evening star" Hesperus, who was the son of Atlas--while the "morning star" was named Phosphorus, for the harbinger of light.
Pythagoras, the Greek philosopher and mathematician, was the first to realize that Hesperus and Phosphorus were really the same lovely glittering orb in the sky.
This strange behavior baffled ancient sky-watchers, and it was not really understood until the 17th century when the great Galileo Galilei started observing Venus through his crude little telescope from his home in Pisa.
But as lovely as Venus is, as it shines brilliantly in our sky, reality is somewhat less enchanting.
An Earth-Size Ball Of Hell Venus, like Earth, circles our Sun within its habitable zone--that comfortable "Goldilocks" region around a star where liquid water can exist in its life-friendly liquid state.
Where there is water, there is the possibility--though not the inevitability--of life as we know it to evolve.
However, Venus is considerable hotter than it should be, and its surface temperature soars to a truly hellish 900 degrees Fahrenheit.
Venus is actually hotter than Mercury, even though Mercury--the innermost planet--is closer to our Sun.
But Venus dwells from our Star at a distance where its surface temperature should reach approximately 212 degrees Fahrenheit--the boiling point of water.
However, Venus has literally the hottest surface of any other planet in our Sun's family, according to radio measurements taken from Earth.
Venus circles around our Sun every 224.
7 days, compared to our planet's 365.
However, Venus takes 243 days to turn once on its own axis.
This means that a day on Venus is longer than its year! Even more bizarre, Venus rotates backwards in comparison to its other seven sister planets in our Solar System.
If seen from high above its north pole, Venus would appear to be rotating clockwise.
If it were possible to stand on the glowing red surface of this inhospitable world, our Sun would rise in the West, wander lazily across the sky, and then set in the East.
This, of course, is exactly the reverse of what occurs on our planet.
The surface pressure on Venus is similar to being 900 metersunder water! Venus is also as dry as a bone.
It does not possess our planet's lovely, churning oceans of life-sustaining liquid water, and its friendly atmosphere.
Venus is dry and searing-hot because of its runaway greenhouse effect that keeps this hellish world's intense heat imprisoned at its surface.
A light drizzle on Venus, that was observed back in the 1980s by the Soviet Union's balloon probes, Vega 1 and 2, was likely not a pleasant shower of lovely liquid water, but a horrible rain composed of corrosive drops of sulfuric acid.
The Soviet Union had joined with several other European nations back in 1984 to launch the Vega Probes, which represented a technologically challenging and sophisticated space mission that landed two balloons and landers on the eerie, uncomfortable surface of Venus.
The two 3.
5 meter-diameter balloons floated for nearly two Earth-days in the bizarre atmosphere of Venus at about 55 kilometers above its hellish surface.
In contrast to the hostile surface below, the Venusian atmosphere is extremely pleasant.
The temperature and pressure here is similar to Earth's own average, and there is also a sufficient amount of sunlight to emanate in from above--and do a lovely, sparkling ballet.
The carbon dioxide that saturates this unlucky planet's atmosphere is partly transparent to relatively short electromagnetic wavelengths.
This radiation is then absorbed by the rocks strewn all over the surface of Venus, which then sends the radiation back out again--only this time, at longer wavelengths.
Carbon dioxide is considerably less transparent to thermal radiation and, as a result, a great deal of this radiation is simply sent right back down to this unhappy world.
The radiation is first absorbed and then partly re-radiated by the carbon dioxide back down to the surface of Venus.
This means that a large amount of the energy stays trapped inside the unimaginably hot envelope of Venus's dense atmosphere.
This is how the runaway greenhouse effect has ruined Venus's chances of becoming a habitable planet, like our own.
Venus is certainly a bedeviled world! If there was ever an ancient time when Venus possessed beautiful, churning blue seas and oceans of liquid water, the runaway greenhouse effect would have mercilessly heated these primordial bodies to the point that they evaporated--and just boiled away.
The presence of liquid water makes it possible for certain chemical reactions to develop on Earth.
These reactions capture unstable carbon and sulfur compounds, and then lock them up in rocks.
On dry Venus, however, these volatile gases stay in the thick atmosphere, and contribute to the runaway greenhouse effect.
Space probes dispatched to Venus have revealed its surface to be pockmarked by impact craters.
Venus also sports at least 1,600 active volcanoes, which are smaller than those found on Earth.
The tortured planet has vast lava plains, mountains, and extensive highlands.
The Venusian clouds of sulfuric acid have long been suspected of hurling sulfuric acid raindrops down to the miserable surface of this planet.
Possible evidence of these corrosive raindrops were, at long last, observed in the 30-year-old Vega data, and reported in the April 6, 2013 Advances in Space Research.
Ring Around The Planet! In the new study, released in November 2013, the astronomers first devised a model of how they thought a dust ring in Venus's orbit should appear.
They then compared this with data derived from the twin STEREO probes that conduct stereoscopic observations of regions of Space.
This helped them find what they were searching for--signs of a dust ring in Venus's orbit.
However, what the astronomers found didn't perfectly correspond to their model, probably because it was devised based on data that describes the dust ring in our planet's orbit.
The team of astronomers ultimately discovered that Venus's dust ring had two components.
The first component swirled around just outside of Venus's orbit, the other just inside of it.
It is not easy for astronomers to spot dust rings in the orbits of the other planets inhabiting our Solar System.
This is because the difference in the density of such a dusty cloud and the Zodiacal Cloud is a mere 10%.
In addition, it is so large that it's hard to observe from Earth's vantage point.
The dust cloud that swirls in Venus's orbit, for example, as a diameter of 220 million kilometers.
There is yet another problem--the individual particles of dust don't live very long in a ring.
This is because, as part of the Zodiacal Cloud, the dust particles are perpetually wandering lazily ever closer and closer towards our Star.
This is significant, because it indicates that the particles of dust that dance around in a ring are constantly being replenished.
Astronomers believe that by acquiring an improved understanding of the dust clouds that swirl around in planetary orbits in our own Solar System, they can better understand exoplanets--offering information that may not be available in other ways.
This study was published in the November 22, 2013 issue of the journal Science.
The lead author is Dr.
M.
H.
Jones, of the Department of Physical Sciences, The Open University in Buckinghamshire, UK.
Possessing a rocky composition like our own planet, Venus is also almost the same size--and the obvious similarities between what turned out to be two very different worlds, caused some earlier astronomers to designate Venus as "Earth's twin.
" Alas, later scientific investigations into the matter revealed that if Venus is "Earth's twin, it is an evil one.
Subject to a devastating runaway greenhouse effect, Venus has an eerie red glowing surface that is hot enough to melt lead, and is veiled by dense, thick, heavy, and deadly clouds.
In November 2013, a trio of planetary scientists from The Open University and the University of Central Lancashire in the UK, confirmed that a ring of dust circles our Sun in the orbit of this weird sister planet of our own world.
The scientists used data derived from NASA's twin STEREO probes to confirm the existence of this dusty ring.
Astronomers have known for a very long time that a dust cloud exists throughout our entire Solar System ranging from our Star to the Main Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter.
This enormous cloud is called the Zodiacal Cloud, and it is composed of interplanetary dust.
Some astronomers have come to realize, over the past several decades, that some of the dust bouncing around in the Zodiacal Cloud can be snared into the orbit of a planet by the relentless pull of that planet's gravitational embrace.
Our Earth wanders through just such a dusty ring--and it was discovered about two decades ago.
Twenty years before that, probes dispatched into Space by the Soviet Union sent back evidence that the same kind of dusty ring also exists in Venus's path around our Sun.
Alas, information derived from those early probes wasn't sufficiently strong to prove that the dusty ring really was there.
Venus is a brilliant and beautiful "evening star" in the twilight of a late Autumn dusk.
It also has phases like Earth's Moon that are visible to sky-watchers who gaze at it through their telescopes.
On a clear Fall twilight, Venus is the first planet that observers can spot--it is even visible before the Sun has set.
As Venus wanders its way around our Sun inside our planet's orbit, it alternates regularly from evening to morning sky and back again.
The lovely world, that glitters like a "diamond in the sky," spends about 91/2 months as a "morning star"--and about the same length of time as an "evening star.
" This behavior caused some ancient astronomers to wrongly think that they were observing two different "wandering stars.
" They named the "evening star" Hesperus, who was the son of Atlas--while the "morning star" was named Phosphorus, for the harbinger of light.
Pythagoras, the Greek philosopher and mathematician, was the first to realize that Hesperus and Phosphorus were really the same lovely glittering orb in the sky.
This strange behavior baffled ancient sky-watchers, and it was not really understood until the 17th century when the great Galileo Galilei started observing Venus through his crude little telescope from his home in Pisa.
But as lovely as Venus is, as it shines brilliantly in our sky, reality is somewhat less enchanting.
An Earth-Size Ball Of Hell Venus, like Earth, circles our Sun within its habitable zone--that comfortable "Goldilocks" region around a star where liquid water can exist in its life-friendly liquid state.
Where there is water, there is the possibility--though not the inevitability--of life as we know it to evolve.
However, Venus is considerable hotter than it should be, and its surface temperature soars to a truly hellish 900 degrees Fahrenheit.
Venus is actually hotter than Mercury, even though Mercury--the innermost planet--is closer to our Sun.
But Venus dwells from our Star at a distance where its surface temperature should reach approximately 212 degrees Fahrenheit--the boiling point of water.
However, Venus has literally the hottest surface of any other planet in our Sun's family, according to radio measurements taken from Earth.
Venus circles around our Sun every 224.
7 days, compared to our planet's 365.
However, Venus takes 243 days to turn once on its own axis.
This means that a day on Venus is longer than its year! Even more bizarre, Venus rotates backwards in comparison to its other seven sister planets in our Solar System.
If seen from high above its north pole, Venus would appear to be rotating clockwise.
If it were possible to stand on the glowing red surface of this inhospitable world, our Sun would rise in the West, wander lazily across the sky, and then set in the East.
This, of course, is exactly the reverse of what occurs on our planet.
The surface pressure on Venus is similar to being 900 metersunder water! Venus is also as dry as a bone.
It does not possess our planet's lovely, churning oceans of life-sustaining liquid water, and its friendly atmosphere.
Venus is dry and searing-hot because of its runaway greenhouse effect that keeps this hellish world's intense heat imprisoned at its surface.
A light drizzle on Venus, that was observed back in the 1980s by the Soviet Union's balloon probes, Vega 1 and 2, was likely not a pleasant shower of lovely liquid water, but a horrible rain composed of corrosive drops of sulfuric acid.
The Soviet Union had joined with several other European nations back in 1984 to launch the Vega Probes, which represented a technologically challenging and sophisticated space mission that landed two balloons and landers on the eerie, uncomfortable surface of Venus.
The two 3.
5 meter-diameter balloons floated for nearly two Earth-days in the bizarre atmosphere of Venus at about 55 kilometers above its hellish surface.
In contrast to the hostile surface below, the Venusian atmosphere is extremely pleasant.
The temperature and pressure here is similar to Earth's own average, and there is also a sufficient amount of sunlight to emanate in from above--and do a lovely, sparkling ballet.
The carbon dioxide that saturates this unlucky planet's atmosphere is partly transparent to relatively short electromagnetic wavelengths.
This radiation is then absorbed by the rocks strewn all over the surface of Venus, which then sends the radiation back out again--only this time, at longer wavelengths.
Carbon dioxide is considerably less transparent to thermal radiation and, as a result, a great deal of this radiation is simply sent right back down to this unhappy world.
The radiation is first absorbed and then partly re-radiated by the carbon dioxide back down to the surface of Venus.
This means that a large amount of the energy stays trapped inside the unimaginably hot envelope of Venus's dense atmosphere.
This is how the runaway greenhouse effect has ruined Venus's chances of becoming a habitable planet, like our own.
Venus is certainly a bedeviled world! If there was ever an ancient time when Venus possessed beautiful, churning blue seas and oceans of liquid water, the runaway greenhouse effect would have mercilessly heated these primordial bodies to the point that they evaporated--and just boiled away.
The presence of liquid water makes it possible for certain chemical reactions to develop on Earth.
These reactions capture unstable carbon and sulfur compounds, and then lock them up in rocks.
On dry Venus, however, these volatile gases stay in the thick atmosphere, and contribute to the runaway greenhouse effect.
Space probes dispatched to Venus have revealed its surface to be pockmarked by impact craters.
Venus also sports at least 1,600 active volcanoes, which are smaller than those found on Earth.
The tortured planet has vast lava plains, mountains, and extensive highlands.
The Venusian clouds of sulfuric acid have long been suspected of hurling sulfuric acid raindrops down to the miserable surface of this planet.
Possible evidence of these corrosive raindrops were, at long last, observed in the 30-year-old Vega data, and reported in the April 6, 2013 Advances in Space Research.
Ring Around The Planet! In the new study, released in November 2013, the astronomers first devised a model of how they thought a dust ring in Venus's orbit should appear.
They then compared this with data derived from the twin STEREO probes that conduct stereoscopic observations of regions of Space.
This helped them find what they were searching for--signs of a dust ring in Venus's orbit.
However, what the astronomers found didn't perfectly correspond to their model, probably because it was devised based on data that describes the dust ring in our planet's orbit.
The team of astronomers ultimately discovered that Venus's dust ring had two components.
The first component swirled around just outside of Venus's orbit, the other just inside of it.
It is not easy for astronomers to spot dust rings in the orbits of the other planets inhabiting our Solar System.
This is because the difference in the density of such a dusty cloud and the Zodiacal Cloud is a mere 10%.
In addition, it is so large that it's hard to observe from Earth's vantage point.
The dust cloud that swirls in Venus's orbit, for example, as a diameter of 220 million kilometers.
There is yet another problem--the individual particles of dust don't live very long in a ring.
This is because, as part of the Zodiacal Cloud, the dust particles are perpetually wandering lazily ever closer and closer towards our Star.
This is significant, because it indicates that the particles of dust that dance around in a ring are constantly being replenished.
Astronomers believe that by acquiring an improved understanding of the dust clouds that swirl around in planetary orbits in our own Solar System, they can better understand exoplanets--offering information that may not be available in other ways.
This study was published in the November 22, 2013 issue of the journal Science.
The lead author is Dr.
M.
H.
Jones, of the Department of Physical Sciences, The Open University in Buckinghamshire, UK.
Source...