VENUS! - rare astronomical occasion

[MIKE BURN]

On June 8, 2004, Venus - the Earth's sister planet - passes in front of the Sun as seen from the Earth. This very rare event (no person now living has ever seen one!) lasts about 6 hours and will be visible from most of Europe, Africa and Asia.







In some ways, Venus is the twin of Earth, almost exactly the same size and only slightly less dense, made mostly of volcanic rocks.



But there the similarity ends and it’s certainly not a place to spend your summer holiday!



The thick atmosphere means that it’s always cloudy on Venus and that the pressure on the surface is 90 times atmospheric pressure on Earth.



The atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide and Venus suffers a runaway greenhouse effect that makes the worst predictions of global warming on Earth seem positively chilly.



The surface temperature is 480oC and if there ever were oceans on Venus, they’ve long-since boiled away.



If you could stand the heat and pressure on the surface, you’d see an orange sky.



If it ever rains, it rains sulphuric acid.



However, Venus is the brightest planet visible in the sky and it is perhaps not surprising those who viewed it from Earth named it after the Goddess of beauty.



Best seen just after sunset or before dawn, a small telescope reveals that, like the Moon, it has phases as the Sun illuminates a crescent, half or full disc, evidence Galileo used to support the idea of planets orbiting the Sun.

MIKE


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[DreamTone7]

Cool Mike. Wish I knew where I could go to see it. Delaware (moved here 6 months ago) is very flat...not where you'd expect to find an observatory.

[bbchris]

WOW! I want to see this!! Thanks for the information Mike!!

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[Treacle Lilly]

damn! We yanks always miss the cool intergalactic events

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