Talk:Venus/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

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First paragraph: "Because Venus is an INFERIOR planet, from Earth it never appears to venture far from the Sun" actually should read "Because Venus is an INTERIOR planet, from Earth it never appears to venture far from the Sun." More precisely, it should read "Because Venus is closer to the Sun than Earth, it never appears to venture far from it."--upright

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—Preceding unsigned comment added by Upright (talk • contribs) 23:41, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

"Venus has slow retrograde rotation, meaning it rotates from east to west instead of west to east as all other known planets in the solar system do" -- not true; Uranus and Pluto both rotate retrograde, Uranus with an axial tilt of 97 degrees and Pluto with almost 120 deg. I propose fixing this. --Phil Karn

I updated the irradiance figures to correspond to those found in the table in a NASA publication. These seem to make more logical sense; if Venus is twice as far from the Sun than Mercury is, then it should only receive 25% the solar irradiance. The NASA numbers correspond nicely. (I also had to change the irradiance given for Mercury, which makes me wonder where the numbers originally came from.) --Bkell 08:01, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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I was wondering the same thing, and I changed that 75% figure to 25% since it was an obvious error. But I didn't have better irradiance figures, so I'm glad you found them. I note that Mercury has a very eccentric orbit, so its irradiance figure will vary quite a bit. --Phil Karn

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Is revolution period same as the planet's sidereal period? It seems to be, and if it really is, the table text should be more precise. DAN MERCIA

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Given all other measurements being SI, perhaps the "four miles an hour" reference should be converted to km? I don't have the back of an envelope handy to figure whether I should round it to six or seven km/h.

Could the creator of the page send me some links about how to write html to my email dracmandx@aol.com, cause i suck but want to get better

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However, due to the high density of the atmosphere at Venus' surface, even such slow winds exert a significant amount of force against obstructions.

This line is irrelevant to the atmosphere of Venus. Unless you want to describe the consequences of wind-surface interactions then it's just hanging there.Chris Lee 12:03 UTC, 03 Nov 2004

on surface the temperature is never below 400°C.

Most of the paragraph is lax in accuracy, but this is a very broad statement. A simple calculation will show that Maxwell's peak could have a temperature of 350°C, if you use 464°C as the mean surface temperature.

Picture

I think the two planet pictures should be switched, since the RADAR picture is not easy to understand and looks very different from the usual pictures of Venus. Awolf002 23:24, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I agree, and was going to suggest the same thing myself~; the RADAR image is not a picture of what Venus would look like to the naked eye and is thus misleading. The Singing Badger 00:13, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I see that the picture has been changed again, this time to what looks like a Venus Express infrared and ultraviolet composite image view of the planet. While it's nice to see that current material is being added to the page, I don't think the new image enhances the look or "realism" of the page. There's no reason why Venus should be the only Wikipedia planet page without a naked-eye accurate image of the body, especially since there already was one!

Orbital characteristics

No offence intended, but the recent edits by The Singing Badger were a bit misguided in my opinion, so I have mostly reverted them. Hoping to avert an edit war, here are my reasons:

• The section name "Getting to Venus" is more accurate than "Landing on Venus" because the issues discussed:
  • have no bearing on actual atmospheric entry and touchdown
  • are relevant whether or not one wants to actually touch down on the surface of Venus, or merely orbit it (or even fly by)
• I think starting out by mentioning where Venus' orbit is located fits perfectly in a section on how to get there. Separating it into its own tiny single-paragraph section serves no purose to my mind.
• There is no article called gravitational well, and it's not clear to me that there should be such an article, so I decided to use italics instead.
• Falling toward Venus does not "create" potential energy. In fact, you lose potential energy when you fall. My original phrasing was that the fall toward Venus represents a lot of potential energy that must be dissipated, and I think that's a more accurate statement.
• I'll acquiesce on the addition of the word "thus", and the changing of "something" to "rather".  :-)

Please let me know if you think I have made the article worse. --Doradus 21:39, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

No worries, I don't do edit wars. :) I know nothing about orbital dynamics, by the way, I'm just interested in clarity for the reader.

• My initial reason for editing was that it seemed odd to put this useful addition between the section on the first flybys and the section on the first landings. Because of this placing, I assumed your reason was that the information is specifically pertinent to landing on Venus (and indeed you mentioned soft landings by name). If you're in fact talking about travel to Venus in general, we can simply move the whole section to the beginning of the 'Observation by spacecraft' section where it makes more sense.
• I moved the orbit section simply because the section on the circularity of the planet's orbit is useful info that shouldn't be buried in a section on space travel. I admit it did look crap in a section on its own, though; maybe it belongs in the overview or something?
• If 'gravitational well' is not an official scientific term it should be in quotation marks, not italics; if it is, it shouldn't have any formatting around it.
• On everything else, I apologise for trying to correct things I know nothing about...!

I'll do some of these edits and if you disagree with them, by all means change again. The Singing Badger 22:17, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I like what you've done. Looks great! --Doradus 03:49, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

Having done some math, it turns out it's not all that hard to get to Venus, so I have moved that "driving off a cliff" text to Mercury (planet), which requires three times the rocket fuel. --Doradus 17:49, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, I stetted that paragraph it before I read this. (Of course, it is not that hard to get to Venus,

Not so obvious, compare Mercury_(planet)#Getting_to_Mercury.--Patrick 23:55, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

Ah - had forgotten angular momentum. Nice section. I coudn't help tweaking it a little. -- ALoan (Talk) 11:18, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

the problem is staying there!) How hard is it from an spacecraft from Earth to enter an orbit around / land softly on Venus? Would it be better to compare it to, say, skateboarding down a hill and trying to stop at the bottom, rather than driving off a cliff? -- ALoan (Talk) 18:39, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I calculate the Hohmann transfer requires a delta-v of 5 km/s for Venus and 15 km/s for Mercury, neglecting Earth's and Venus' own gravity. Escape (which current technology has never achieved without a gravitational slingshot) requires 12 km/s. If you are interested, I can do a real calculation including escape from Earth and capture by Venus/Mercury. The overall effect would be to make the delta-vs larger and more similar. In fact, according to this very cool chart, the planetary gravity would add about 6.4 km/s to all these numbers, so (without double-checking) that gives 11.4 to Venus, 21.4 to Mercury, and 18.4 to escape the sun. --Doradus 19:07, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

Interesting - so Mercury is more difficult to get to than escaping the Solar System! An interesting factoid for Mercury (planet), no? And Venus is about 33-50% as hard as Mercury. Are these points worth mentioning somewhere? -- ALoan (Talk) 20:34, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I can do the numbers more rigorously if you like, and then we can decide how to phrase them. (Remind me if I forget!  :-) --Doradus 19:55, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

Transit picture

Does anybody have a "real" (and GFDL) picture of the 2004 transit? The current picture is from a simulation! Awolf002 16:28, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Are the ones on Transit of Venus or Transit of Venus, 2004 appropriate? -- ALoan (Talk) 20:11, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Right! Those are good. I will pick one and change it. Awolf002 14:49, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Cultural references vs. Venus in fiction

I think "Venus in fiction" is too narrow. The section should include other cultural expressions, and references to other cultures than the Anglo-Saxon/Western. See discussion on Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates. — David Remahl 16:52, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I don't think anyone would disagree with you on that. It needs to be written though. When that's done, 'Venus in fiction' could simply be a subheading within a larger section on cultural references. The Singing Badger 18:27, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

True. While I'm not really qualified to, I'll make an attempt at reducing the bias in the article. Someone more knowledgeable will no doubt clean it up in the future. — David Remahl 23:35, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I just wanted to point out that an article about Venus in fiction (similar to Earth in fiction and Mars in fiction) was started some time ago (not by me). Maybe we should move some of the Cultural References to that article? --Koveras 15:33, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Astrology

Shouldn't there be a page about how the planet Venus is interpreted in different schools of astrology?

You mean "page", right? Not "section in this page"? This article is geared toward the physical side of the planet, not it's mythological one. I think astrology would not fit in this page. Also, look at the dab page Venus. Awolf002 15:21, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"Recent" confusion

The radically different connotations of the word "recent" in the third paragraph of the "Suface features" section are confusing. I assume, but cannot know from this article, that "recently-solidified basalt lava" implies "several hundred million years" ago, based on the later text in the paragraph. I'm fairly certain that the "recent results from... Magellan" are only a few years old at most, based on the lack of Pleistocene-era space probes. (The link helps, too. ☺) Unfortunately, my beleaguered brain is failing to come up with a concise way of reducing the time-scale whiplash. Could someone else give it a go? — Jeff Q (talk) 02:45, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps "geologically recent" should be OK in the first case. Geo- here is confusing a bit, but searching with Google I found it used concerning Mars [1]. Cmapm 18:57, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This is alreday fixed by somebody, however. Cmapm 19:01, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Brightest point of light?

Regarding the following:

It is sometimes referred to as the "Morning Star" or the "Evening Star", and when it appears it is by far the brightest point of light in the sky.

What about when the sun and/or moon are out at the same time? Venus is the third brightest object in the sky, unless one is being very specific about points of light. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 16:26, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I think the sentence means that Venus is the brightest star-like object in the sky. Maybe slightly misleading, but in the next paragraph it is described as third brightest object in the sky. Should they be combined to avoid repetition?--Jyril 17:10, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

I've tried to clarify the statement a bit, although it might be more sensible just to omit the fact that it's the brightest point source and just stick with mentioning that it's the third brightest overall. Worldtraveller 22:08, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Meteor craters

"Owing to Venus's thick atmosphere, which causes meteors to decelerate as they fall toward the surface, no impact crater smaller than about 3.2 km in diameter can form."

if meteors are slowed, shouldnt the craters be smaller ie "no impact crater greater than..."?

I've tried to make that bit of the article a bit clearer on this point. The situation is that the smaller meteors burn up completely, the intermediate ones might reach the ground but are slowed to such low speeds that they don't form craters. Only the largest can reach the ground and still have enough energy to form a crater, and this results in a minimum size of crater that can be formed. This page contains a good explanation of the general principle. Worldtraveller 22:08, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Image

Following precident of other planet articles shouldn't the visible light image be the one at the top of the page in the table?--Deglr6328 05:51, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree. See for example the german Venus article de:Venus (Planet). I think the best visible light picture of Venus was the one taken by Galileo probe, which is already in the "Observation by spacecraft" subsection --Bricktop 03:39, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Athmospheric pressure

I was wondering: How comes that the pressure of Venus's atmosphere is so much higher than Earth's although both planets have roughly the same mass and should hence be able to retain the same amount of gas in their gravity well? Anybody happens to know? TIA. Simon A. 16:23, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The Earth has little carbon dioxide in its atmosphere but far more locked in carbonate rocks. There's enough carbon dioxide in the Earth's rocks to allow a Venus-like density if it were released. More significantly, the Earth's water has a huge volume of material (water, of course) that would become atmosphere if the Earth were to be warmed to Venus-like temperatures. Most theories hold that as the sun expands to a gas giant toward the end of its life, the Earth will slowly be warmed to temperatures around 60°C, at which point a runaway greenhouse effect will take effect, and then temperatures will skyrocket. An increasing load of water vapor will itself add density to the atmosphere (that itself raising the temperature) and accelerate the greenhouse effect, until at roughly 305°C, the critical point of water, the greenhouse effect from water vapor will no longer cause further heating. Any increased temperatures will result from the further expansion of the sun, and at another point, carbon dioxide will be released from carbonate rocks.

With an even higher pressure, the Earth would become even hotter than Venus even if the upper atmosphere clouds enough to prevent any sunlight from reaching the Earth's surface. But the Earth's seething surface will be anything but dark; its rocks will radiate heat which will likewise be prevented from escaping through the same clouds that prevent the entry of all but the dimmest sunlight.

Don't be unduly scared. This won't happen for hundreds of millions of years. So far, the Earth has a relatively thin atmosphere, much unlike that of Venus, that isn't very good at holding onto heat. We still have real winters from about 35° north and south poleward, and real nights everywhere. We are safe so far from the runaway greenhouse effect, and the carbon dioxide that would make the Earth a Hellish place is safely locked away.

Venus, in contrast, is too hot to have any carbonate rocks. It's also too hot to hold water vapor. An atmosphere as crushing as that of Venus is hot in its own right. The perfect gas law (PV=nRT) implies that temperature is proportional to pressure, and Venus has enough atmospheric pressure to be exceedingly hot in its own right.--66.231.38.97 01:20, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

That last bit is not right. T is proportional to P only if the volume V is constant. But this is not realistic for an atmosphere. Apart rom really special circumstances, when you increase pressure, its volume that goes doen to suit, and temperature does nothing. It's hot under Venus's atmosphere purely because of the greenhouse. That is: the heat has a hard time getting out because there's more stuff to pass through before you get into space. Deuar 19:09, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Page move

This page was moved from Venus (planet) to Venus. Is this being done for all of the planets? Did I miss the discussion? Is a reader more likely to be looking for the planet or the god? -- ALoan (Talk) 09:45, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes, this is surprising! I think this should be reverted and then discussed! Awolf002 13:41, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It has been proposed that Venus (disambiguation) should be placed at Venus (which presently redirects to the disambig page), however, in the course of that discussion several editors have expressed a preference for placing Venus (planet) at Venus, so we are expanding that discussion to include this possibility.

To vote please visit Talk:Venus (disambiguation)#Page move: Disambig or Planet.

Dragons flight 01:07, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)

The discussion has just been closed and has led me to believe that there should be something at Venus rather than it being a redirect. The majority wanted it to be the planet, though not by a massive margin. I've now gone with that decision. violet/riga (t) 10:51, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Appearance

This new table does not fit into this article at all. I will remove it, if no objections are made. Awolf002 12:37, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Temperature

The temperature at the tops of these clouds is approximately −45°C / −113°F.
-45C is nowhere near -113F. 45C is about 113F, hence the confusion. What's the correct temp? Thanks!Rockhopper10r 5 July 2005 22:56 (UTC)

Should it be pointed out that Venus is the hottest planet in the Solar System due to its atmosphere's Greenhouse Effect, even though it is further away from the Sun than Mercury? -- Permafrost 06:08, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

The Greenhouse Effect and the fact that it is hotter than Mercury are discussed under Venus#Atmosphere. It doesn't explicitly say "the hottest planet in the Solar System"; this is in fact not so, Jupiter reaches temperatures of thousands of K before solid matter is encountered, for example. Venus is the Solar System's hottest terrestrial planet.

Surface features

There is a new Geology of Venus article translated from the Spanish, still in progress, containing much new information, especially about the volcanology of Venus. It looks as though there's a fair amount of information in Venus which could be added to that one and then the 'Surface features' section of this page rewritten as a summary of the combined information. When the new main page is finished I'd like to have a go at this, any thoughts? Keithlard 18:29, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Ambiguous

"...and is considered an evil angel "cast out of heaven" by several Christian denominations."

Is the planet considered evil? Is Lucifer not considered evil by Christians? I'm going to change it to this:

"Venus was called Lucifer by St. Jerome, who is the fallen angel "cast out of heaven" in the Christian scripture."

If this is not the original intent, then feel free to change it.

Observations and explorations article

Any real reason they can't be in their own article?? It's large enough, right?? 66.32.246.23 23:22, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

rotation

extremely slow rotation of less than one rotation per Venusian year

Doesn't this effectively mean that Venus rotates 'the other way around' (as compared to other planets, excluding Uranus and Pluto)? DirkvdM 10:58, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Visible light image needed

Need at least one visible light image.--Nixer 19:19, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Dear NASA

Dear NASA,

Why not send weather satellites to Venus? Then we could put them on TV, for a Venus Weather Channel akin to the current (Earth) Weather Channel. I'm sure lots of people would be interested to see up-to-the-minute pictures and video of Venus. oneismany 11:43, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Something tells me it'd be hot. Here7ic 17:27, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

What would be the point in sending weather satellites to Venus? Who would want a Venus weather channel? I'd prefer to know the weather where I live, not on another planet. It would be a waste of money to send something into space to observe the weather of another planet. No matter how interesting, there is no scientific goal attached. Brownsc 02:59, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

That isn't the point. It wouldnt be a waste of money, people could subscribe to having venus weather updates E-mailed to their computers. NASA could do that with other things such as the mars rover/orbiter images. This way NASA could mke a bit of money to help fund its progams, instead of sucking up taxes. Space tourism takes on more than one form. T.Neo 11:54, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

The problem would be the cost of transmitting the images and venuses cloud cover resulting in rather dull results.Geni 12:02, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

The more we learn about weather systems on other planets, the more we will learn about how things work on Earth! It is good to know about the ice caps and history of water on Mars, volcanoes and run away global warming on Venus, hurricane like systems on Saturn, the magnetosphere on Mercury, etc. etc. All this has importance to learning about Earth. Kheider 14:17, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

As much as this section interests me, please stop it in interest of WP:TALK. Michaelbusch 17:27, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Surface Illumination

A reader Barton has sent an e-mail to the Wikipedia help desk claiming that the figure for the surface illumination is wrong

"The text gives the surface illumination as 1,017 Watts per square meter. The correct figure is 17 Watts per square meter. The figure given is off by a factor of 50.

The Solar constant at Venus is roughly 2614 Watts per square meter. Because a planet receives sunlight on its cross-sectional area, but has spherical area, only 1/4 of this falls on an average meter -- 654 Watts per square meter. But Venus has a bolometric Bond albedo of 0.76 (not 0.60 as in the article), which cuts the illumination which enters the atmosphere/surface system to 157 Watts per square meter. The clouds absorb about half of that and the air absorbs most of the rest, so you wind up with only 17 W/m2 at the surface.

Check the U. of AZ compendia "Venus" and "Venus II" for further details."

Thanks for your consideration of this point. Capitalistroadster 01:58, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Further to this, he has provided further information:

Source for the bolometric Bond albedo of Venus being 0.76:

Taylor, F. W. et al. 1983. 650-680 in Venus, ed. Hunten, D. M. et al. Tucson, AZ: Univ. of

Ariz. Press.

Source for the surface illumination being 16.8 +/- 2.3 Watts per square meter:

Marov, Mikhail Ya. and Grinspoon, David H. 1998. The Planet Venus. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press., p. 298.

Silly precision

Can someone with a source please figure the correct precision on this?

On December 16th, 1850, Venus reached the lowest distance to earth since 1800, with a value of 0,264138541298281 AU = 39514827 kilometres. This will be the closest approach of Venus to earth until December 16th, 2101 when Venus will reach a distance of 0,26431736 AU = 39541578 kilometres to earth.

The sig figs on the first AU number would carry it down to millimeters. Dragons flight 02:06, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the precision is silly. But the figures are wrong anyway. Using solex9.0, by famous expert Aldo Vitagliano, shows that the 1850 pass was very close, the closest since 1631. But it will not be beat in 2101 (or even within a few tens of thousands of years). Actually,

This is reliable. I ran the program with and without the big three asteroids (most of the perturbing effect from the asteroid belt) and Neptune, with no difference in the numbers, which were given to six decimal places. There was only a tiny difference after also removing Uranus. There was no difference between the DE409, DE406, or the now obsolete DE200 ephemerides from JPL for starting positions. I also compared it with JPL's Horizons system for the 1631 distance, and the difference is small enough to neglect for this analysis.Saros136 08:36, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Orbital resonance into Planet characteristics tables

Sorry for this error...

I propose adding this value into Planet characteristics tables:

Orbital resonance,

which is an integer ratio (smallest denominator) between Orbital period of this planet and the nearer one.

(This is partly "my original discovery", but it is verifiable from values, that you (wiki) show in planets Orbit period values, just with a desktop calculator)

I feel this value is important, since it keeps orbits "in tune"...

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Venus / Mercury == 69/27 - 0.12%

Earth / Venus == 44/27 + 0.41%

Mars / Earth == 51/27 - 0.81%

... (note - 1 planet is missing here, and correct ratio would lead into middle of asteroid-belt...)

Jupiter / Mars == (68/27)^2 + 0.69% (would you correct this calculation?)

Saturn / Jupiter == 67/27 + 0.07%

Uranus / Saturn == 77/27 + 0.3%

Neptune / Uranus == 53/27 - 0.18%

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Pluto is not a planet, just a biggest kuiper-belt asteroid, locked into orbit by Neptune in ratio 3/2.

Proposed ratio of 8/5 for Earth/Venus [2] has got a 2.55% error. It just means, that the star is rotating and closes more preciselly after 27 outer steps than after 5...

Trying to find a smallest integer denominator for other planets leads always to 27. Surprising?

The integer ratio is important, since it means, that planets get over this many orbits into sync, which keeps them running in this tempo, since small tempo-deviances would be straightened by reciprocal attraction at meet-points...

The difference from integer ratio (shown in percent) is also important, since this makes the meet-points very slowly rotating into a higher tune octave...

Please - verify the values once (and percent deviances) before publishing, but it should be obvious...

Semi Psi 17:41, 26 January 2006 (UTC).

Congratulations, you have discovered a new way of looking at the Titius-Bode law of 1766. To the degree it is relevant to anything, it is already discussed in Solar System. Dragons flight 18:45, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

But please do not label this with my name as a law... Can you (we) just silently add it into the pool of wikipedian knowledge? From my point of view, this is just a consequence of concentrating knowledge in an accesible space, arising into an "united world" inteligence...

And yes, it is of a relevant importance to something else... It will pay out understanding, what the higher-level wave-form looks like (by suming the residuum over centuries)...

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I had rewised this, and found some obvious errors in the above:

Orbital resonance of Venus/Earth is 13/8, minus approx. 2.5 days. Can be clearly seen by barytrace, which creates 5-pointed star in circles, and closes after 8 earth-years. The whole star rotates in negative direction (contrary to planet orbit direction) approximatelly after 239 earthyears for 1/5 cycle. Precise values are still being calculated...

Orbital resonance for Mercury should be relative to Earth-Venus barycenter. Mercury is the only planet, that crosses barycenter between other two planets, and seems to be synchronized by this.

Orbital resonance for Jupiter/Saturn is 5/2, with positive residuum.

Mars orbits such, that it just does not cross Jupiter/Saturn barycenter trace. Venus rotates such, that it just does not cross Earth/Mars barycenter trace, and so on...

Neptune/Uranus resonance seems rather 49/25, but it still needs a very long (4100 ey) data-set for verification...

...

Semi Psi 15:57, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Orbital resonance (continued)

Sorry, in the above table, the percentage deviance values were obtained by subtracting actual and expected ratios. But a correct operation would be dividing the values and subtracting 1, which yields even smaller percentage deviances...

Percentage deviance should be calculated this way:

((OrbitPlanet2/OrbitPlanet1) / (Resonance/27)) - 1

and not this way:

(OrbitPlanet2/OrbitPlanet1) - (Resonance/27)

Some matematitian would know even better...?

Venus face

Sorry, there was an erroneous topic here... I really apologize for placing ill-considered values here, even on talk-pages...

Cythera

I tweaked the second paragraph of the "Name" section because it was not entirely clear at all why "Cytherean" would be an alternate adjective to "Venereal." It also wasn't immediately clear when I followed the link to the "Cythera" article, so I just added that little bit of explanation, pretty much copied from the text of the Cythera article. 140.244.107.148 15:36, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, that should be signed CommanderFalafel

The adjective actually comes straight from the name Cytherea, which is just another name for Aphrodite/Venus. siafu 18:07, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I wrote a short article on "Cytherean" a year ago... not sure when the link vanished from the article. I've added it back in. Shimgray | talk | 21:02, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Sothis cycle

Since 5 * 584 = 2920, which is equivalent to 8 * 365 Venus returns to the same point in the sky every 8 years (minus two leap days). This was known as the Sothis cycle in ancient Egypt, and was familiar to the Maya as well. -- Unfortunately, I don't see anything in the Sothis entry to explain this; the entry says that Sothis is almost surely the star Sirius. Could someone elaborate? Also, this entry conflicts with a later sentence in the pentagram explanation that claims the cycle is 5x8=40 years. Using the awesome authority of Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code as a tiebreaker ;) I'll change that second sentence to agree with the first. This article could still use a good graphic demonstrating how the apparent pentagram comes to be formed. Mike Serfas 15:49, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Possible error

From the article:

On December 16th, 1850, Venus reached the lowest distance to earth since 1800, with a value of 0.26413854 AU = 39,514,827 kilometres. This will be the closest approach of Venus to earth until December 16th, 2101 when Venus will reach a distance of 0.26431736 AU = 39,541,578 kilometres to earth.

Perhaps my thinking is muddled, but isn't this (because of the "until") saying that 39,541,578 km is a shorter distance than 39,514,827 km? If so, what should these values be? One-dimensional Tangent (Talk) 16:44, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I am not an expert but I wonder if these values within the Physical characteristics are correct (I think they are not..but not sure):

Rotation period −243.0185 d Rotation velocity 6.52 km/h (at the equator)

Thank you for any feedback.

Magnetosphere

Does anybody know how strong a magnetosphere Venus emits? I recall something about it being very weak, but I may be thinking about another planet... Here7ic 17:29, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Venus has no magnetosphere.--Jyril 17:44, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Since Venus does not have a Magnetosphere, it's atmosphere is being stripped be the solar winds and generates a tail that extends nearly out to the Earth's orbit. Kheider 18:58, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Venus in fiction

Why this list is on this article? There is a separate Venus in fiction for them. Only a brief, leading paragraph on the subject should be included here, not a long list.--Jyril 17:50, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Recording Venus

I'm recording the Venus article into ogg format. It's my first one, so I'm still playing with the sound setup and getting over listening to my voice. I'll only upload the files after I read the entire article. In the meantime, I'm stashing the stuff at http://aero.ist.utl.pt/~rdrs (university area, no publicity).cool

--Rdrs 16:57, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

What is the possessive form of "Venus"?

Both " Venus' " and " Venus's " are used extensively in this article, although the latter seems to hold the edge. Alas, I'm no English major, but maybe somebody could settle this and clean the article up.

I would say Venus's since it is a singular name. The only time you should just add an apostrophe to show possession is if you have a plural which ends in s.

--Syd Henderson 21:46, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Astrological sign assocated with Venus

What is the astrological sign associated with Venus in the Zodiac? --User:Angie Y.

Deficiencies

I think this article falls well below the standards we expect of FAs these days. The lead section is inadequate, there is nothing at all about the exploration of Venus, precious little about volcanism and the theory of global crust recycling, inadequate referencing, and an enormous and not particularly relevant list of books that mention the planet that should be replaced by germane prose. To be honest I think the article needs a rewrite largely from scratch. I intend to list it on FARC shortly and am noting its deficiencies here as now required. Worldtraveller 14:05, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

NPOV? "The Goddess"

This section bugs me.

"The pentagram has long been associated with the planet Venus and the worship of the goddess. It is most likely to have originated from the observations of prehistoric astronomers."

Not the part about Venus being associated with a goddess, but that it says "the goddess" rather than specifying what goddesses the planet Venus may be associated with. As far as I'm aware, the term "the goddess" is generally used to refer to a modern religious movements. At any rate, I think this needs to be clarified and/or needs to have sources cited.

FWIW, I read that as "associated with the planet Venus and the worship of the goddess [Venus]"; it seems the most obvious reading. Shimgray | talk | 16:24, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

The personification of the planet Venus as the Morning Star & Evening Star (on this page) only refers to Roman mythology, whereas there are personifications of both in many ancient culures (and a few modern ones) --The Lesser Merlin 12:31, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Back to FA?

If anyone is interested in collaborating in a mini-project in getting this article back to FA status, drop me a message on my talk page. --BillC 22:29, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Surface features: dubious x 2

Other recent findings suggest that Venus is still volcanically active in isolated geological hotspots

That'd be very interesting, of course, but I was under the strong impression that present-day volcanic activity is one of the long-outstanding questions that eg. the Venus Express probe was going to have a crack at. Such a tantalizing statement needs a source!

Venus's rocks are much harder than Earth's, which leads to steeper mountains, cliffs and other features

Really? There's some pretty steep cliffs and other features here on Earth. I've seen them! ;-) I don't know how you can get steeper. Also - why then did most topographic reconstructions from Magellan data feature captions like "vertical exaggeration ×10", etc. Finally, are the rocks really harder at all? They're hotter, which would make them softer, I would think. Maybe lack of erosion is being confused with steepness and hardness. Erosion is actually what is responsible for the steepness of landforms on Earth. Deuar 18:59, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

The southern continent is called Aphrodite Terra, after the Greek goddess of love, she was a slut and is the larger of the two highland regions at roughly the size of South America.

Is it really appropriate to use the word 'slut' in this article? Is it apropos to the name of the highland, or Venusian geography in general? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 134.114.55.54 (talk) 07:32, 18 February 2007 (UTC).

Vandalism, since reverted. Michaelbusch 16:58, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Rotation resonance with Earth conjunction

I put the numbers in and I don't see any resonance. Nothing close. Somebody kick me if i'm wrong. Looks like a complete myth. Where did people get it from?
Venus orbit period: Tv=224.70069 days
Earth orbit period: Te=365.256366 days
Time between conjucntions is Tv×Te/(Te-Tv). Gives 583.920620 days. Equals 2.4027826 venus rotations. Nothing remarkable.
2.4 is not the same as the claimed 5.001
Deuar 22:56, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Since there appear to be no objections, it's getting the chop Deuar 14:08, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

The bit you removed is correct, actually - the confusion arises because Venus's sidereal day (time between culminations of a given star) is 243 days, but its solar day (time between successive culminations of the Sun) is 116.75 days. 116.75 x 5 ~ 584. User:BillC and I are currently working on a re-write of the article in which this is hopefully better explained - see Venus/temp. Worldtraveller 15:10, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Ah I see, of course, it's the solar day that matters indeed. Very interesting.

I consider myself kicked then ;-) Deuar 15:27, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Good work on checking it up though and sorry I didn't notice your query a couple of days ago - the current article clearly doesn't explain it well enough. Thoughts on whether the re-write does the job much appreciated! Worldtraveller 15:45, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

The rewrite is much better - the original somehow has a light sensationalist smell, which initially caused me to be suspicious. It might be nice to explicitly mention that this causes Venus to show a very similar face to Earth during each opposition, though, since it may not be obvious to all. I wonder if anyone has cited that 1969 reference since. By the way, it's nice to see your serious improvement drive over at Venus/temp Deuar 16:08, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Collaboration of the Week: June 13-19

Venus has been made Astronomy collaboration of the week for the week of June 13-June 19. Please make suggestions for ways to improve this article here or by all means, Be Bold! --Volcanopele 21:27, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Venus is in fact right now a Featured Article candidate. The best place for making suggestions for improvement at least for the next few days might be its FAC candidacy page. BillC 21:40, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Duly noted, Collaboration of the week changed to Mars. (note to self: read talk page header boxes) --Volcanopele 21:54, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

mea culpa

Sorry for my boo boos. Tony 07:31, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh, not at all. Thanks for the copyedits. I just altered a couple of things from the latest - 'solar wind' and 'ashen light' invariably have 'the' before them in the literature. I also changed the sentence about phases - as worded, I thought it seemed to imply that Venus has phases because it orbits the Sun. This is true, but not what I was trying to say. I reworded to try and make it clearer that 'As' is used in the sense of 'while' rather than 'because'. I could probably word it to avoid 'as' altogether. Worldtraveller 09:00, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Venera images

Images made by the Soviet Union after 1973 were the copyright of the Soviet Government and on its dissolution passed to its successors. This includes all the Venera surface images. The Venera 13 images, for example, has been deleted from the Commons as a non-free image, see its deletion log there. It's not impossible that in the future such images will be released to the world, but for the time being at least, they're not suitable for the GFDL. BillC 08:54, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Dynamo theory

I've removed, twice, the addition of as described by a dynamo theory for celestial bodies. to the end of The weakness of the magnetic field is thought to be due to Venus' very slow rotation (see below), which is not fast enough to generate a dynamo effect. This is because it's completely unclear to me what is meant by this. I can't see why extra text is needed here, and this added text is extremely confusing. Worldtraveller 09:58, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Venusian Atmosphere

Can anyone possibly shed some light on the minor atmospheric constituents of venus (carbonyl sulphide, for instance), and possibly some data relating to the atmospheric chemistry of the planet? Unless I've missed it, there doesn't seem to be any reference to the puzzle of why hydrogen sulphide and sulphur dioxide can co-exist there, when the two tend to react together. Ditto, I've found no mention of the unknown aerosol that causes the planet's strong absorbtion of the ultraviolet region (presumably a sulphur compound of some form, due to the absorbtion bands).

Finally, should it be noted that carbon dioxide, at the temperature and pressure of the venusian surface, is no longer strictly a 'gas', so much as a Supercritical Fluid?

These are just a couple of observations. If they aren't pertinent to this article, feel free to disregard the suggestions. IMHO though they seem like points of interest which may be worth covering - albeit perhaps in an article about the Venus Atmosphere, akin to the Geology of Venus article? --Xanthine 23:44, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

To be honest I think this sort of thing would be too detailed for this article. I think atmospheric chemistry might be a bit beyond the interest of most readers. It could be worth starting a subarticle though. Worldtraveller 15:23, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Early Observations/Discovery of Atmosphere

Ok, so I've tried to get this change going a number of times with less than satisfactory results since I can't seem to find a good source. The change is this: I'm pretty sure most historians agree that Mikhail Lomonosov was first to postulate that the ring observable around the trailing edge of Venus at the beginning of a transit is light bending through a dense atmosphere. He saw this during the 1761 transit. I have found an abstract of an article asserting this and you can find the reference in the most recent change I made to the article. Can anybody with better resources check out this lead? I think it's worth knowing who was first.LGDubs 14:56, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

What we have at the moment is Henry Russell's 1899 paper, which credits Schroter with the discovery. I'd of course be happy to credit Lomonosov, if a source more convincing than Russell can be found. I'm not convinced, I have to say, by a conference abstract. Worldtraveller 15:23, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Global Warming link...

Just a suggestion - since Venus is referred to having had an atmosphere similar to Earth's, and could theoretically have a surface temperature similar to earth's today, but had a drastic increase in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses, which more than quadrupled its surface temperateure... I think a link to topics on Global Warming may be informative and apt. Readers of Wikipedia are all residents of the planet Earth after all. A simple link could add value to the topic.

That, or any more information on the details we have on the warming process that Venus may have gone through from what we know so far, and what experiments may be under way to verify these established theories here on earth.

Ryan Fenton 14:27, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Should we have a global warming link here. Hardee67 13:31, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

"Avg. distance from Sun"

The other planets articles list the semi-major axis of the orbit, not the "average distance" (which would be strictly less, since the eccentricity is non-zero). Also, "Avg. distance from Sun" is a link to "semi-major axis". I have been unable to determine (consulting the references, and a little googling) if this number is indeed one or the other (they will be close but different to this accuracy), though I suspect that we do indeed have a mislabeling here (as well as an inconsistency from the other planet articles). Can anyone verify? 67.180.168.73 06:26, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Almost certainly a mis-labeling. Great that you spotted it. The "average" distance depends on how you weight your average. An average over time would be greater than the semi-major axis, but this is almost never used. I would suppose that the value is correct for the semi-major axis because this is what is always given in orbit data. Deuar 11:03, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Any photos of the surface of Venus?

Any photos of what the surface looks like? I think only two probes actually landed on Venus.. Did they take any pictures when they landed? Malamockq 20:46, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

There's a section in the article under Venus#Surface_science. Veneras 9, 10, 13 & 14 all returned images of the surface; 9 and 10's in black and white, 13 and 14's in colour. Venera 11 and Venera 12 were designed to take pictures, but their cameras both failed when the lens covers failed to eject. Venera images of the surface post-date the 1973 change in Soviet copyright law, and cannot be shown in Wikipedia due to copyright issues. --BillC 00:00, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Well do you have a link to these photos on another website? Malamockq 13:37, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Try http://www.mentallandscape.com/V_Venus.htm for Don Mitchell's analysis and manipulation of the images. This link is in the article's external links section. The answers to all your questions so far have been in the article. Please read it; I think it's a good read. BillC 17:54, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Most likely, these web sites will be in violation of the asserted copyright, and so we should not link to them! Awolf002 16:24, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to know who owns the copyright for the Soviet space images?--JyriL ^talk 16:38, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Copyright passed to the Russian and other successor governments to the Soviet Union. To answer Awolf002, I believe that Mitchell has authority to publish the images on his website, and even if he did not, it is not Wikipedia's duty to police the copyright of external sites, and there is not a problem with including a link to it. --BillC 17:54, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

NSSDC hasn't had any problems keeping the images in their website[3][4] for over a decade without any copyright statement (exluding the newer Mitchell's versions added much later). Calvin J. Hamilton, whose website is also 10+ years old, has some Venera images labeled as public domain.[5]--JyriL ^talk 20:56, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

I was just making sure that you all are aware of WP policy regarding copyright violations done by other web sites. If we can clearly determine that a site does not have the right to publish an image or text, we should not link to that page per policy. We do not police that site, but we do have the choice not to link to it. Awolf002 23:26, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

That is a fair point, and is acknowleged. In the case of Mitchell's website, there is no indication of breach of copyright, and indeed he attributes the ownership of the images and acknowledges the help of the authors. So in this case I think it is a fine external link to include. --BillC 23:41, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

I find it rather strange that it is of such vital importance for Wikipedia to include an image of the poster for Big Momma's House 2 that we're willing to stoop to fair use for it, but when it comes to the only existing ground-level photographs of the nearest planet to Earth we're so paranoid of legal action that we can't even link to other sites that display them. Bryan 23:37, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Images? Like this one already hosted on Wikipedia?

Surely fair use could be called on any and all images of Venus, provided they're for recognition and/or critical commentary. Does anyone know if there's a reason why astronomical images seem to be omitted from Wikipedia's Fair Use policy page? Given that at least half of all TV documentaries concerning Venus or the Venera landers have used said images... I think we've all seen those pictures in popular culture by now. --Xanthine 13:58, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

It's more than likely that images that were taken by the Soviet space program are public domain, though I can't find an explicit statement to that effect. All images published in the Soviet Union prior to 1973 are exempt from international copyright laws (but may be under copyright in CIS nations), and according to Wikipedia:Copyrights "Reports about events and facts, of informative character" are exempt from copyright under Russian law. Generally, though, I'm guessing that these images have a similar copyright status to images taken by NASA, i.e., PD by default. siafu 14:19, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

New Venus images?

Venus Express has now been orbiting Venus for a couple of months. Anyone know why no true-color images of the planet (not the surface of course) have not been released? You'd think they'd have taken quite a few. But it seems like the only true-ish color images around are still from Mariner 10. FelineAvenger 04:29, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Potential error

The article says: When Galileo first observed the planet in the early 17th century, he found that it showed phases like the Moon's, varying from crescent to gibbous to full and vice versa. This would be impossible if both the Sun and Venus orbited the Earth, and these were the first observations to clearly contradict the centuries-old belief that the solar system was centered on the Earth. I believe the last part of the sentence, in italics, is false. Venus phases demonstrate that Venus is revolving around the Sun, but it does not demonstrate that the Sun is not revolving around the Earth. A system where Venus and Mercury would be rotating around the Sun, with the Sun and the rest of the planets revolving around Earth, was indeed proposed---it is the well known Tychonian system. I therefore believe that the last part of the sentence should be changed apropriately. That said, I am no astronomical nor historian expert, so I would like to see some opinions before editing. Marcus wilby73 06:33, 3 September 2006 (UTC)Marcus Welby73

According to the linked article all the planets orbit the sun and then it orbits the Earth. Upto this time the Ptolemaic system was thought correct, Galileos observations were the first to clearly show that Venus did not orbit the Earth.. and thus Earth was possibly not at the systems centre. The artcile should not be changed -- Nbound 06:43, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

With all respect, don't you find a difficulty in reconciliating your opinion that the "Earth was possibly not at the systems center" with the article when it mentions that Galileo observations clearly contradict the belief that the Earth is at the centre of universe? In any case, the Venus article clearly contradicts what is written in the Tycho Brahe article, where we can read: "In the years following Galileo's observation of the phases of Venus in 1610, which made the Ptolemaic system intractable, the Tychonic system became the major competitor with Copernicanism, and was adopted by the Catholic Church for many years as its official astronomical conception of the universe." The contradiction stems from the fact that, in the Tychonic system, the Earth is still at the centre of the universe, with the Sun system rotating around it. Marcus wilby73 06:56, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, agreed, perhaps the article would be better off saying: "and these were the first observations to clearly contradict the Ptolemaic System Model". (or something along those lines -- Nbound 07:17, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Enhanced Venus Surface Photos

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060911_venus_images.html Hills, you can see hills. Thanks, CarpD 9/11/06

Wow! who would have thought you could get so much more from those old images. I've taken the liberty of adding it to the external links section. Deuar 13:51, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Life

I know at least one research team has suggested microbes might live in the upper atmosphere of Venus. Some one who knows more about this might add it. Marskell 10:35, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It's a very interesting theory but it is very remote, and I believe it falls under the category "original research", which is not really suitable for an encyclopaedia because it's not knowledge yet. At Extraterrestrial life there is already a short mention of this: "For example, atmospheric life has been hypothesised on Venus and the gas giants." and I think this is enough. Alex.g 19:53, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

If the "research team" in question is sufficiently notable and has produced verifiable references for this claim, then it wouldn't be original research to mention that "such and such a group has proposed that microbes might etc." We could also describe details of their proposal, if there are any (one would hope if they're worth mentioning at all they'd have come up with some details about how such life could live and what sort of evidence it might leave). Bryan 20:40, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Here's a link on the subject. I personally think this could be mentioned in the article, in the context of the early discussions of possibilities of life on Venus (cp. Carl Sagan's theories on "seeding" the planet's atmosphere with life).

Shouldn't there be any information on life or supposed life on Venus? Venus is noted as being one of the main candidates to harbor life

Given it's extreme surface temperature and the near total lack of water in it's atmosphere, life does not seem likely on Venus, but maybe you have some source that says otherwise?--agr 19:27, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Correction, earthly life is unlikely. Venus could easily hold beings who's biology is designed for high temperature, sulfurous environments. --Anarchy_Balsac

You misunderstand me ArnoldReinhold. What I meant to say was that like the article on Mars there should be a section entitled "life". That doesn't necessarily mean that life does exist, it means that life could exist.

There are a lot of sources on that - here's one. Mithridates 06:39, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

FYI, here are a few more sources on the topic. I think it's being sufficiently investigated to quality as not being original research.

NASA Technical Report:

• Astrobiology: The Case for Venus

New Scientist:

• Molecular rings could shelter venus bugs
• Venus may surprise us...
• Acidic clouds of venus...

Astrobiology Magazine:

• Venus: Inhabited World?

Space.com:

• Was Venus Alive?

PS: I noticed there were two sections entitled "Life" on this talk page, so I've amalgamated them. --Xanthine 11:52, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Contradiction.

The geological information on this page claims the surface of Venus is 500 million years old, but the "Geology of Venus" page claims it's 100 million years old. What gives? Octopod 14:10, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

infobox

There is a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Astronomical_objects#Planet_infobox_conventions_.28km_vs._AU_vs._miles.29 on standardizing the planet infoboxes, as well as the possibility of changing the planet diameter to radius. If you care about these things, let your opinion be heard there. Lunokhod 10:09, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Simultaneous occurance of transits/Solar eclipse

The next simultaneous occurance of a transit of Mercury and a transit of Venus will be in 69163, and the next simultaneous occurance of a solar eclipse and a transit of Mercury would be in 6757. Would there be any way to calculate the next simultaneous occurance of a transit of Mercury, a transit of Venus, and a solar eclipse? (I presume it would take thousands if not millions of years). Brownsc 02:48, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

According to Jean Meeus, "a total eclipse of the Sun will take place during the Venus transit of April 5, 15232". Mind you, I know it doesn't answer your question... CielProfond August 18, 2008, 01:07 UT —The preceding signed but undated comment was added at 01:06:30, August 19, 2007 (UTC).

Female-named planets

Hi wikifolk; great article! The introduction says: Venus is the only planet in the Solar System named after a female figure. I changed the line to note that this statement is only true for the "full" planets, while a couple of dwarf planets (i.e., Eris (dwarf planet) and Ceres (dwarf planet)) are named after females, but was reverted on the grounds that Only one dwarf planet (Eris) and the sentence then becomes muddled.

While my correction may have been muddled, my feeling is that the sentence as reverted is just incorrect. An argument could be made that a dwarf planet is not a kind of planet, but since "planet" itself is ill-defined, and the common reader (such as myself) understands "dwarf" to be a modifier on "planet", the sentence definitely rankles.

Thoughts? --TotoBaggins 01:30, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually, planet has been well defined by the International Astronomical Union since lat year, for the Solar System at least, and dwarf planets are not a kind of planet. Note the dwarf planet section in planet. Wikipedia uses the offical definition of planet, so the sentence is correct. I agree dwarf planet is unclear, and I don't like it. Dwarf stars are stars (but minor planets are not planets). Saros136 07:52, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Additional refs

Ther should be little bit more about the atmosphere!

• C. de Bergha, V.I. Morozmaltese, F.W. Taylor, D. Crisp, B. Bézarda, L.V. Zasova (2006). "The composition of the atmosphere of Venus below 100 km altitude: An overview". Planetary and Space Science. 54 (13–14): 1389–1397. doi:10.1016/j.pss.2006.04.020.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Fredric W. Taylor (2006). "Venus before Venus Express". Planetary and Space Science. 54 (13–14): 1249–1262. doi:10.1016/j.pss.2006.04.031.
• Vladimir A. Krasnopolsky (2006). "Chemical composition of Venus atmosphere and clouds: Some unsolved problems". Planetary and Space Science. 54 (13–14): 1352–1359. doi:10.1016/j.pss.2006.04.019. --Stone 15:31, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Semi-major axis number seems to be wrong

I just noticed that the Semi-major axis distance given seems to be inconsistent with the Aphelion and Perihelion distances. It's currently Aphelion 109,941,849 km, Perihelion 108,476,002 km, but the Semi-major axis is stated as being 108,208,926 km. Now this doesn't seem to make sense to me, as it shouldn't be possible for the average to be lower than the Perihelion (should it?). So, I put the figures into my calculator and it seems the Semi-major axis should be 109,208,926 km, this is the same as what's given except for one number (an 8 instead of a 9). So I assume that it was just a typo, so I'll put in the 109 figure. I'm taking the precaution to ask here as I'm not totally sure about it, but if it is wrong then please undo it. --Hibernian 18:23, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

The NASA fact sheet appears to agree with the 108.21e6 semi-major axis, as does this site, another NASA site, this, this, and the Celestia data files. It looks like it's the aphelion/perihelion that are wrong, the orbital velocities, and eccentricity. Oddly, the astronomical-unit and Imperial measurements appear to be accurate. In the interests of being bold I have fixed the metric measurements (by converting from the Imperial and fact-checking with the two NASA sites). Please fact-check and make sure I didn't miss something in the process. 71.209.35.57 23:50, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Plate tectonics.

I'm a little confused. I'm no scientist, but there appears to be two conflicting statements in article about plate tectonics. In the opening paragraphs the article states:

Venus is thought to undergo periodic episodes of plate tectonics, in which the crust is subducted rapidly within a few million years...

But in the Internal structure section, it states:

The principal difference between the two planets is the lack of plate tectonics on Venus, likely due to the dry surface and mantle.

So which is it? Does Venus have plate tectonics or not? Black-Velvet 09:05, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

All recent sources indicate that there has not been plate tectonics for about 500,000,000 years. As you research older articles, there was more uncertainty on this point. There appears to be local (volcanic) tectonic activity. . The terraforming article should also be fixed; it indicates that Venus's tectonics are similar to Earth's, which is clearly not the case. If I were more brave, I would correct the opening paragraphs.Schim 01:01, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Possible vandalism

Someone better check this edit, because I'm not sure if it is or isn't vandalism. · AndonicO ^Talk 19:39, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

According to the "Worldbook @ NASA," 65 percent of the surface is covered by flat, smooth plains. [[6]] [[7]] Schim 01:17, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Why no plate tectonics, also clarify the 100 million vs. 500 million line

After reading the article I was unclear why Venus lacks plate tectonics. There's a throwaway line about "dry crust", so maybe the theory is that Venus' solar proximity led to early water loss, the loss of water led to arrested plate tectonics (and to the CO2 accumulation and greenhouse gas effect?), then arrested plate tectonics and greenhouse gases led to a volcanism dominated globe with a hot ultra-dense atmosphere ...

It would be great if someone could make that sequence explicit.

Also, I was transiently confused by a 100 million vs. 500 million year cycle for crust recycling. I think the article is trying to say that recycling starts every 500 million years and takes 100 million years to run its course. (So are the interludes 400 or 500 million years? It depends on whether the 100 million year interval is a part of the 500 million year cycle or a separate cycle.) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jfaughnan (talk • contribs) 02:30, 5 May 2007 (UTC).

'Life on Venus' section

Removed; it was copied verbatim from here. — BillC ^talk 18:57, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Semi protection required?

It seems to me that this article is getting an inordinate amount of vandalism from anon editors lately. Does anyone else think that a period of semi protection would be a benefit? — BillC ^talk 21:33, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Sulfur spelling

I'm SURE it's sulphur, not sulfur. I've looked it up and the article on sulfur/sulphur is spelled sulfur. Whenever I've looked at the Periodic table, though, it reads Sulphur. Perhaps this an American-english variation issue, like color and colour? I myself live in England, can anyone hlp me out here? NIN 23:23, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Sulfur is the American English spelling, sulphur British English. What matters most is that an article adopt a consistent spelling style throughout. See WP:ENGVAR — BillC ^talk 23:42, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Per Sulfur#Spelling, the spelling sulfur was adopted by International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, an international body that sets standards for the naming of chemical elements and compounds. Sulfur has also been adopted by the Royal Society of Chemistry, a British organization. So, sulfur is no longer just the American English spelling, but the spelling adopted by chemistry researchers worldwide. --Volcanopele 00:29, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Cauldera is also spelt wrong. It should be caldera. I am not aware of any British/American differentiation in the spelling of this word.

Clouds of Carbon Dioxide?

Good morning, I have one question: in the introduction it is written: "Venus is covered with an opaque layer of highly reflective clouds of carbon dioxide, preventing its surface from being seen from space in visible light;"

But the clouds of Venus are not composed mainly of sulphur dioxide and sulfuric acid? Thanks, Alex2006 11:14, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Venus in fiction (part II)

The entire section was deleted, restored by me, and deleted again. There was no discussion, and the edit comment explained the removal on the grounds of notability. I disagree, and feel that the section is worthy of inclusion, just as a similar section is included at Mars. At the very least, there should be a proper discussion since the section has been in for at least half a year (that's as far as I've scanned back so far.) Thoughts? --Ckatz^chat_spy 07:51, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Further checks show a less-well-developed version of the fiction section (more a collection of notes) in the version that was featured on the front page back in 2005. So, that information has been present for quite some time, apparently. The text also discusses the works of many notable authors - it isn't just a "Venus was mentioned here" trivia dump. --Ckatz^chat_spy 07:59, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

As well, the article was reviewed for featured article status in June 2006. At that time, the "In fiction" section closely resembled its present version; there is no mention of deleting the section in that review. --Ckatz^chat_spy 08:08, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

I wrote that section, when Worldtraveller and I did a complete rewrite of Venus in order to regain its featured article status, the article having had just lost it. (One of the reasons Venus lost its FA status was because it had degenerated into a list of 'Venus was mentioned here' trivia.) The section has been added to by a number of editors since, so that it has grown somewhat. I can understand why someone might think it a little trivial, or crufty. However, my original reasoning was that:

1. Venus has featured prominently in fiction over the last hundred years, and it would be remiss not give it some mention.
2. I tried to establish a link between what authors were writing about, and the then state of Venusian planetary science. As the science evolved, then so did the fiction.

Perhaps the section would benefit from being trimmed down, but I would dispute that a brief treatment of this topic is inappropriate for the article or constitutes undue weight. You say that, for example Mars has a similar section, and indeed, at the time, this was guided me when I wrote this. Moreover, even short articles on constellations (Cetus, for example) frequently have a sentence or two on the underlying mythology.

For reference, this was the state of the article at the time Worldtraveller and I were done with it. — BillC ^talk 11:10, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Apparent contradiction in the text

The following two statements about the nature of Venus' core appear to contradict each other:

• "Like that of Earth, the Venusian core is at least partially liquid"
• "Another possibility is that its core has already completely solidified."

Whilst the case of Mars, which like Venus has no internal magnetic field but retains surficial paleomagnetism, would suggest a fully solidified core on Venus is not likely since paleomagnetism on Venus' surface is unknown, some scientists apparently do believe Venus has a completely solid core like the Moon[8].

luokehao

Image removal

I have removed two fair use images that were listed as copyrighted. These were public domain images, which someone Photoshopped and copyrighted the result as a derivative work. That in itself is questionable. When asked if he would release them, he said only for non-commercial use. When he was told that the pictures would have to be removed as a result, he answered: "I am not willing to declare the images "public domain". Not because I plan to profit, but because I am philosophically opposed to wikipedia demanding that." (See User_talk:DonPMitchell#Remastered_surface_images_of_Venus). The compromise was to release them under "fair use." Well, that is not a compromise. It is a cop-out. Furthermore, anyone can take the PD images and clean them, so there is certainly an alternative. These pictures do not belong on Wikipedia under those conditions. Danny 16:00, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm in total agreement with you here Danny. Given the wealth of public domain images produced by the various space agencies of the world, it is inexcusable to use non-free images on articles about planets. --Cyde Weys 16:46, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

I am more interested in the availability and copyright status of the original raw data. Once you have a raw image, it's not hard to then gimp that into a reasonable complete image. It might not be the quality or accuracy of Don's images, but [9] (from the raw image on Don's page) is certainly better than [10]. Unfortunately I doubt anyone will every establish the status of the originals. Bcsr4ever 00:19, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I must take strong exception to the remark above about "the wealth of public domain images produced by the various space agencies of the world." The Venera images are the only close-up images of the surface of Venus ever taken. Given the incredible harsh conditions on Venus, their capture is a feat unlikely to be duplicated anytime soon. If there is anyway they can be included within the bounds of copyright law, they belong in this article. --agr 18:56, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Manned Venus Flyby

The new section is certainly interesting, but it may be over long, particularly since there is a main article to link to, and the mission never took place. Any thoughts? — BillC ^talk 22:43, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Venereal

Although this adjective is mostly applied to the goddess Venus, I'm pretty sure it has also been applied to the planet Venus, particularly by astrologers, though I haven't found any hard sources yet. Any thoughts on where I could locate one? Serendipodous 07:33, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

i don't recall where, but i remember reading somewhere on Wikipedia that "Venerian" or "Venerean" can be used in place of Venusian (since in Latin the possessive form of Venus is Veneris.) However, i don't seem to recall "Venereal" being listed as an acceptable form.

what do you mean "listed"? Venereal disease are those related to Venus. Although it has a negative connotation, it is the correct use of the word. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.239.253.2 (talk) 17:32, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

---

Morning Star & Evening Star

The personification of the planet Venus as the Morning Star & Evening Star (on this page) only refers to Roman mythology, whereas there are personifications of both in many ancient culures (and a few modern ones)--The Lesser Merlin 12:22, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Snow

This article should mention the "snow" discovered on the mountains of Venus, and speculation as to what it might be. Serendi^podous 21:11, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

That "snow": I heard somewhere that someone said it might be metal, melted under the high tempretures.T.Neo 14:28, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Surface Geology: Contradiction?

This article states that a complete resurfacing of Venus due to massive subduction occurs at intervals averaging 100 million years. Yet it also says that the last resurfacing event occured about 500 million years ago. What gives? 63.211.201.174 (talk) 06:15, 10 May 2008 (UTC)Xuthus

Venus in Alchemy

I think author of this part flipped it around: "Alchemists constructed the symbol from a circle (representing matter) above a cross (representing spirit)." In alchemical symbolism, the circle represents spirit and the cross represents matter, as referenced in wikipedia's Classical Planets in Western Alchemy page. Also, it probably should reference "western alchemy" to be accurate, since alchemy was not limited to the west. BSWright 21:06, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Bah. I'd like to know how anybody pretends to know how the symbol was constructed. It's a feminine symbol (obviously) for a feminine planet, and one that has to do with beauty. And to me it looks like a simple copper mirror (such highly polished copper mirrors have been found in Egyptian tombs). And this is the alchemical symbol for copper also. SBHarris 04:20, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Possible vandalism.

Can anyone check this edit? Thanks. · AndonicO ^Talk 16:23, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

I suggested the edit on 10/08/07 under "Venus in Alchemy" discussion topic, and made the edit in the article in 10/16/07. BSWright 14:07, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Venus in Human Culture - Philosophy

That the terms "Morning Star" and "Evening Star" both refer to Venus, but that it is not necessarily known that they do so, is a classic example in Philosophy. It shows there is more to names than that which they name. See Sense and Reference Wacky philosophy professors everywhere talk about Venus because of this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.147.139.249 (talk) 08:37, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Where's the mass?

Is there a reason I am not seeing a mass listed on this page? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.35.9.214 (talk) 11:26, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Well spotted. There was a missing terminating / in an embedded reference. I think it's fixed now. — BillC ^talk 18:50, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Venus Brightness

The first paragraph states

"It is the brightest natural object in the night sky, except for the Moon, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6"

Alternative:

"It is the third brightest object in the sky, following the sun and moon, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6"

90% of the surface Venus appears to be recently solid basalt lava.-xXSlipKnoTfan182Xx —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.60.188.111 (talk) 00:05, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

objections?

Enlinesix (talk) 03:13, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Fine with me, but in the planet articles Sun and Moon are capitalized.Saros136 (talk) 03:52, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

New research here!!

It essentially tells us that Venus losses 2 H per 1 O, the solar wind interacts heavily with the atmosphere, and that in the beginning, oceans with beautiful singing sirens and boats with strong and bold heroes, ... approximately covered Venus, ... once upon a time. Maybe... Said: Rursus ☻ 08:27, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

This is a bit of a conundrum, because no one wants to be the one to take on the task of completely rewriting this article from the ground up. I think the best thing to do would be to gather together a group of people and assign each of them a single task; one dealing with the past, one dealing with the solar wind, one dealing with the lightning and so on. Then we will have to figure out which of the information goes here and which goes into the more specific articles. Serendi^podous 11:36, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

East or West?

The article says that the sun rises in the west on Venus. This makes sense if you imagine that you're on the north side of the solar system, looking down on the north pole of the Earth rotating one way and Venus rotating the other. But so far as I knew north is defined by planets, not solar systems - in that case the north pole of Earth points roughly the same direction as the south pole of Venus. That would mean the sun rises in the east on Venus. On the other hand, the articles for Venus and Mars list the right ascension and declination of the north poles of each planet in roughly the same place, so maybe there is a north side of the solar system? Forum discussions seem to suggest there is real inconsistency between definitions with some people using either one,[11] but I'm not enough of an astronomer to know whether one side of the disagreement might be seen as a "fringe" view. Regardless of the answer there's enough potential for confusion that something should be said explicitly about how the directions are defined. If I took the article for north at face value I could even believe that east could be counterclockwise of north! 70.15.116.59 (talk) 18:57, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Technicly the north pole of the planet is the pole that apears to be spinning counter-clockwise from above, however i think there should be some sort of standard, because of the extreem tilt of uranus it probably was just nocked on its side by an asteroid, and not actual retrograde, and venus's rotation is probably a result of tital locking or some other not impact force, I say title locking because a thick dense atmosphere would effect tital locking more than the water on the earth effects earth. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.15.131.253 (talk) 02:40, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Garbled sentence

Would someone care to rewrite the tail end of this sentence from the introduction:

"but the venusian behavior corresponds well with Earth modeled then changed by removing the lubricant—the oceans."

I would do it myself, but I'm not sure what the original intent was. 271828182 (talk) 19:28, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

That statement was inserted on 21:19, 26 June 2007. Someone might want to re-proof some of the wording. -- Kheider (talk) 20:01, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I had a go; I understand what the guy was trying to say, since I've heard it numerous times on geology shows, yet I would prefer a citation to explain it. Serendi^podous 20:34, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Venus and pelicans at twilight picture

Maybe I'm stupid, but what is this, pelicans on venus?! I don't see the planet venus as viewed from earth on that picture? Please help, thank you. 86.52.79.130 (talk) 22:20, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

It's the bright white dot (actually a crescent) beneath the 6th bird from the left. — BillC ^talk 23:18, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Oceans, two continets and Life?

I know that venus must have had an ocean, it might have escaped into space but what about fossils? Mars and Venus had oceans long before earth had Habitable habitats. They say that Mars's evaporated after 3 or 5 million years but venus kept it's ocean for 100 more years (Or something) it was years later that Venus must have had Global warming which made the water vapor escape from the atmosphere into space. But because it had it's oceans longer could it have supported life? If you look at the two of the continents and some of it's islands i could see a whole range of habitats from rainforests to srubby shrubland.

Refs

• doi:10.1016/j.actaastro.2006.04.011
• doi:10.1016/j.pss.2006.04.021
• C. de Bergh, V.I. Moroz, F.W. Taylor, D. Crisp, B. Bézard and L.V. Zasova (2006). "The composition of the atmosphere of Venus below 100 km altitude: An overview". Planetary and Space Science. 54: 1389–1397. doi:10.1016/j.pss.2006.04.020. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |issues= ignored (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• [12]
• doi:10.1146/annurev.earth.26.1.23
• doi:10.1146/annurev.earth.29.1.489--Stone (talk) 23:37, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Venus climate

• Thesis
• Sean C. Solomon, Mark A. Bullock, David H. Grinspoon (1999). "Climate Change as a Regulator of Tectonics on Venus". Science. 286: 87–90. doi:10.1126/science.286.5437.87. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |issues= ignored (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Mark A. Bullock and David H. Grinspoon (2001). "The Recent Evolution of Climate on Venus". Icarus. 150: 19–37. doi:10.1006/icar.2000.6570. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |issues= ignored (help)
• George L. Hashimotoa, and Yutaka Abe (2005). "Climate control on Venus: Comparison of the carbonate and pyrite models". Planetary and Space Science. 53: 839–848. doi:10.1016/j.pss.2005.01.005. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |issues= ignored (help)--Stone (talk) 13:37, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Loss of water from the atmosphere into space

I believe, discovery of ongoing loss of water into space, which is carried out from the atmosphere by the solar wind (due to the absence of intrinsic magnetosphere) was much more important discovery by Venus Express than vortex at the South Pole. I think, it should be mentioned, and not just in a few words as it is in Atmosphere of Venus article for now. As is mentioned at the mission website, if we condense all water vapor from the atmosphere of Venus and continuously distribute it on the sphere with a radius equal to mean radius of Venus, we should get a layer of water 3cm thick. But prior to the beginning of loss of water into space this layer might be at least 4.5 meters thick (according to the mission website)! I believe, it's clear now, that it was a very important discovery. Av0id3r (talk) 01:19, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Agree we should find a place for it. The section discussing Venus and Earth as sister planets: but "What happened to Earth's CO2 and what happened to Venus' water?" or something.SBHarris 01:24, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Unscientific Hypocritical Propaganda

Saidsoisms:

"Venus is thought to undergo periodic episodes of plate tectonics, in which the crust is subducted rapidly within a few million years, separated by periods of a few hundred million years of relative stability. This contrasts strongly with Earth's more or less steady state of ongoing subduction and continental drift, but is consistent with how geological processes operate without oceans, since oceans are believed to act as a lubricant in subduction. It is believed the surface rocks of Venus are only about a half-a-billion years old as impact crater analysis suggests that its surface dynamics have exchanged its surface for a clean face (wiping out old craters) sometime in the last billion years."

Where is the citation for even one of these statements? Where even a "citation needed"? Why hypocrites you evolutionists and panspermians are. It is also false as there are many scientists who believe it is about 6000 years old. SINCE WHEN IS EVIDENCELESS SPECULATION, "just trust me" "cuz I said so" objective fact? Is this the same as what so many anti-christians on wikipedia call weasel wording? It should be. It is weaseling in anti-biblical propaganda in the guise of science.

So this is what the wikipedia "community" (anti-christian propagandists) considers one of the best examples of their Wickedpedia work? They are right, it is one of the best examples of their subtle sneaking in of lies without immediately looking like hypocrites to the masses of gullible and deluded. I think you all should watch Tainted Evidence - Forensics On Trial and Forensics on Fire to get another dose of reality. Mere pretension does not make something scientific. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kyleain (talk • contribs) 22:34, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

References:

http://media.gospelcom.net/aig/Volume_072/03.mp3
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v23/i3/venus.asp
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v19/i4/galileo.asp

_______

And here are some references from actual peer-reviewed scientific articles:

[13], [14], [15] [16], [17]

And here is a ref explaining water's role in plate techtonics: [18], As you can see, there is some debate about whether the volcanism was sudden or gradual, but no one doubts the 500-million year time frame.

And really, since this is a scientific article, creationism, since it cannot be disproved, and is therefore not science, doesn't belong here anyway.

Nonetheless, I agree; that paragraph should have been better and more accessibly referenced. So there you are. Serendi^podous 01:31, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Error about Venus Express

I've spotted an error in the Exploration of Venus section. It is said that the Venus Express probe was launched by the Russian Federal Space Agency. Although it was indeed launched by a Soyouz rocket, the launch was carried by the private company Starsem. In fact the ESA purchased a launch from this company, so saying that it was launched by the russian governement agency is fairly inaccurate, I think. This can be corroborated in the ESA web page and in the Starsem launch log (wich states de launch as "commercial").

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Venus_Express/SEMZE3808BE_0.html
http://www.starsem.com/soyuz/log.htm

I'd have corrected this myself, but as the page is protected, can any of the moderators do it? Thanks.
--86.66.150.201 (talk) 20:33, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for spotting this! I've made the corrections to the text and cited it. Incidentally, the article is not protected, but semi-protected, meaning it can be edited by anyone with an account. You might like to create one. Regards, — BillC ^talk 23:30, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

venus:second planet of solar systen —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.217.16.58 (talk) 05:25, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Please need answers!!HELP

What is the diameter of Venus? Density? Distance from the sun? Rotation Period ? Revolution Period? thats all i need to know so just help witht the answers thats all!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.139.234.49 (talk) 16:02, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Look at the blue infobox along the side. Or just read the physical characteristics and orbit and rotation sections. Serendi^podous 20:26, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

What is the composition of Venus?!? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mrs.shipley (talk • contribs) 23:43, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Take a look at the infobox on the right hand side of the article. --Tango (talk) 00:07, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

The infobox and article give information about the composition of Venus's atmosphere. If the question is about the composition of Venus itself, then it is a fair question: the Internal structure section does not go into great detail, though it acknowledges that "there is little direct information". There may be some well-sourced, peer-reviewed papers speculating on Venus's bulk chemical composition, for example. I'll have a look around. — BillC ^talk 00:13, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Good point, I misread the infobox. Sorry. I suspect the composition is pretty similar to that of Earth, the masses are pretty similar so they should have retained the same proportions of different weighted elements. --Tango (talk) 00:56, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

The lead section has a phrase to that effect, however it is not brought out and sourced in the main text, and so ought to be. After a quick search, here is an article describing density constraints on the composition. (Haven't read it yet, but it is a start.) — BillC ^talk 02:14, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Language Used

What is "best hypothesis" ? There is no such an expression in science. I suggest re-writing the first section. It is writen like a novel or newspaper article rather then an encyclopedic one.

~~ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.99.197.21 (talk) 23:25, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

"which look somewhat like pancakes" is another example of that language. please let's be serious. and "after that only" we can expect the rest of the world to take wikipedia seriously.

~~ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.99.197.21 (talk) 23:35, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Can someone translate the information box on the side into ENGLISH please!? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.72.222.188 (talk) 13:11, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Would you people just be serios

Venus, the goddess

I noticed that all of the other planets (that were named after male dieties) had mentioned in the intro that the planet was named after a god, but nothing mentioned with venus. So I am adding one. Kind of ironic that all of the male planets had a mentioning in the intro, but not the female though... JanderVK (talk) 04:17, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

For people who think that this page is their personal property!!

This page seems to get vandalised a lot by 'deleters' who appear to think that the Venus wiki page is their personal website. Wiki is not for that purpose. It is for collaboration by multiple users. So how about you vandals who want only your content and your opinions inside the article go and make your own personal website and stop trying to take possession of this website for your own purposes otherwise I will have to start reporting you.

This addition has been removed several times because it does not cite any reliable references, and it basically sounds like speculation on an event that may or may not happen many years in the future. Please read the applicable Wikipedia policies on this at WP:Reliable Sources, WP:Crystal, and WP:OR. AlexiusHoratius (talk) 01:25, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I have now added reliable scientific references from two scientists well versed in this field. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.44.214.179 (talk) 01:34, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Before you simply press 'undo' how about you give other users the opportunity to expand and improve upon this addition before taking the opportunity away from them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.44.214.179 (talk) 01:47, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Please consider that your attitude (as evidenced above) can be taken as being unnecessarily hostile and confrontational. There is no need to make spurious accusations of "vandalism"; in fact, the repeated addition of uncited material could itself be considered vandalism, justifying the removal. In future, please try asking "why" first. --Ckatz^chat_spy 05:40, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Tell you what lads. I went out of my way to find references as requested, then after that I even requested that the information added remain for a short time so others could improve upon it and you still pressed the 'zap' button without a moments thought. Wiki is meant to be a community however you lads obviously dont have a very high regard for beginners. Think I wont waste my time with this anymore. This is one person encouraged to take part in wiki who is very disappointed and wont be coming back. Perhaps you lads need to take a course in customer service one day. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.44.214.179 (talk) 09:32, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps you might wish to elaborate; as of this post, the text is still present in the article. Furthermore, it has actually been edited (twice, by two different editors) and the references have been improved. --Ckatz^chat_spy 20:02, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

This is a pathetic argument! You are all arguing about nothing! Wiki is a comunity and everyone is intitled to there own opinions. If everyone simply double checked where they were getting this information from we wouldn't be having this argument! You have no right to delete other peoples articles. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.72.222.188 (talk) 13:59, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

That's not correct. All Wikipedia articles are supposed to be cited by reliable sources. It's the burden of the editor who makes the change to make sure that they are properly cited. That said, whenever I make a change to an article, I almost always put a post on the discussion page explaining why I made the change so others will know why I did what I did. 216.239.234.196 (talk) 14:59, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

venus ( the planet )

Problem with the value of the axial tilt of Venus.It is 2.6° and not 177.36°. 86.205.58.28 (talk) 19:55, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

It's the same thing: 180-2.6° is (approximately) 177.36°. Venus' axial tilt has been expressed relative to prograde rotation. 2.6° is the axial tilt if the rotation is considered retrograde. — BillC ^talk 20:48, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Axial tilt

Is Venus tilt of 177 degs. or 2.7 degs? this source say it's 177 degs. What source said 2.7 degs?--Freewayguy ^{Ask? +000s} 00:15, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

$2.7\approx 180-177$. Venus rotates clockwise, while other planets conterclockwise. So the tilt depends on the definition of the north pole. Ruslik (talk) 05:29, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

So is it tilt 2.7 degs similar to Jupiter's. or it's tilt chaos like Pluto .--Freewayguy ^{Ask? +000s} 18:36, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

There is difference from retrograde rotation. A retrograde rotation is when a planet orbits left to right, most planets rotates right to left. Venus I know rotates left to right same as Uranus, so their sun rises at west and sets at east, everyone else sun rises at east and sets at west, except gas giants do not have solid surface period, so their skies is always colorful, and multilayer, and they don't even have day/night.--Freewayguy ^{What's up?} 17:35, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Any other answers. You still didn't answer my question. Be clear that retrograde rotations has nothing to do with axial tilt. In older planet books they said Venus is tilt 2.7 degs. Just Venus' rotations rtro meaning it orbits left to right so the sun rises at west and sets at east, i beleive Uranus is the same thing.--Freewayguy ^{What's up?} 02:41, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Craters

Can someone explain this statement?

It is also noteworthy that there are a surprisingly low number of impact craters. 

With the extraordinarily dense atmosphere, what would be a surprise would be any significant impact craters at all. The meteors would have to be really big to last long enough to hit the surface. Right? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jokem (talk • contribs) 21:36, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Inconsistant infobox

Shouldn't the infobox either give an axial tilt of 3 degrees and the rotation as prograde, or an axial tilt of 177 degrees and the rotation as retrograde? At the moment it gives a combination of the two, which doesn't seem right to me. --Tango (talk) 22:38, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Of course you are right - I changed it. Icek (talk) 00:25, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

venus

venus is the second planet from the sun ☼ƒτxá`☼☼c╝+▐1 ♂▐♣▐MM♣ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.116.202.96 (talk) 18:11, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

venus the planet

every 224.7 Earth days. The planet is named after Venus, the Roman goddess of love. It is the brightest natural object in the night sky, except for the Moon, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6. Because Venus is an inferior planet from Earth, it never appears to venture far from the Sun: its elongation reaches a maximum of 47.8°. Venus reaches its maximum brightness shortly before sunrise or shortly after sunset, for which reason it is often called the Morning Star or the Evening Star.

Classified as a terrestrial planet, it is sometimes called Earth's "sister planet," because the two are similar in size, gravity, and bulk composition. Venus is covered with an opaque layer of highly reflective clouds of sulfuric acid, preventing its surface from being seen from space in visible light; this was a subject of great speculation until some of its secrets were revealed by planetary science in the twentieth century. Venus has the densest atmosphere of all the terrestrial planets, consisting mostly of carbon dioxide, as it has no carbon cycle to lock carbon back into rocks and surface features, nor organic life to absorb it in biomass. It has become so hot that the earth-like oceans that the young Venus is believed to have possessed have totally evaporated, leaving a dusty dry desertscape with many slab-like rocks. The best hypothesis is that the evaporated water vapor has dissociated, and with the lack of a planetary magnetic field, the hydrogen has been swept into interplanetary space by the solar wind.[6] The atmospheric pressure at the planet's surface is 92 times that of the Earth.

Venus's surface has been mapped in detail only in the last 22 years, by Project Magellan. It shows evidence of extensive volcanism, and the sulfur in the atmosphere is taken by some experts to show that there has been some recent volcanism, but it is an enigma as to why no evidence of lava flow accompanies any of the visible caldera. There is a surprisingly low number of impact craters, demonstrating that the surface is relatively young, approximately half a billion years old. There is no evidence for plate tectonics, possibly because its crust is too strong to subduct without water to make it less viscous, and some suggest that instead Venus loses its internal heat in periodic massive resurfacing events.

The adjective Venusian is commonly used for items related to Venus, though the Latin adjective is the rarely used Venerean; the archaic Cytherean is still occasionally encountered. Venus is the only planet in the Solar System named after a female figure,[a] although two dwarf planets — Ceres and Eris — also have feminine names. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.116.202.96 (talk) 18:16, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Sidereal Rotation Question

How was the Sidereal rotation measured/calculated for Venus? Was the rotation period computed using moment of inertia? If so, does the moment of inertia deviate at the Aphelion and Perihelion? Are the measurements taken from Earth, and if so, are deviations in sidereal rotation attributed to our relative position? Note: I'm a little new to astronomy, but very curious and eager to learn. Can someone help out? Note that the calculated Sidereal rotation period is very similar to the orbital period. Is it possible that Venus does not have this sidereal rotation relative to the Sun, and instead only appears to have a clockwise sidereal rotation as perceived from Earth during its orbital period? Sorry if the questions are naive - but I have no idea how these measurements and calculations are taken/computed/recorded. Benzan (talk) 11:15, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Sidereal rotation is rotation relative to the distant stars. I think they measured Venus' rotation using radar on orbiting probes, before probes were sent it was very difficult to measure because they couldn't see the ground through the clouds. --Tango (talk) 13:41, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Too many pictures

There are too many images of Venus in the article. Many of them are undoubtedly pretty, but there is no additional encyclopaedic value conferred by adding one after the other. There quite simply isn't enough room for them without the formatting becoming completely lousy. — BillC ^talk 23:14, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism

Is it just me or is the vandalism on this article starting to get a bit out of hand, every now and then in my watch list I see someone has changed parts of this article to some nonsense.

Mr Deathbat 14:24, 16 December 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr Deathbat (talk • contribs)

Sure, it seems to get vandalised quite frequently. Just looking at the history shows a seemingly constant flow of vandalism. But more importantly, is there something that can be done about it? HumphreyW (talk) 14:35, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, there is - I've requested semi-protection. There are few if any constructive edits from unregistered users (in fact, from anyone), so let's just stop them editing it completely. --Tango (talk) 14:39, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

It seems to be the only solution to this problem. its such a shame that people vandalise articles, doesnt get anyone anywhere.

Mr Deathbat (talk) 14:43, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I semi-protected it for 1 month. Ruslik (talk) 14:46, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Hope fully This will deter people from vandalising

Mr Deathbat 14:52, 16 December 2008 (UTC)(talk)

And as soon as the protection is lifted we get a flurry of vandalism from anonymous IP users. I suggest that the protection become more permanent. HumphreyW (talk) 02:48, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I have requested semi-protection again. I fear you are right, though. —BillC ^talk 19:11, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

A couple of questions

When was Venus first seen through a telescope? It says somewhere that Galilei was the first who studied the planet's phases, but it says nothing about the actual planet. And when was it first discovered that it was a planet, and not a star? 80.202.40.85 (talk) 17:27, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

That's a good question, though I don't know the answer. Venus' status as a planet was known a long time before anyone studied it with a telescope, though the true nature of a planet would not be established for some time. —BillC ^talk 19:14, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

You also have to remember that the word "planet" has changed its meaning a lot over the millennia, and was originally a subclass of "star". The word "asteres planetai" meant "wandering stars", just as comets were "asteres cometes", "bearded stars." Basically everything in the night sky was a star. Serendi^podous 19:28, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Galileo was the first to study Venus as Planet (See: Venus#Early_studies) because he was the first to see the phases of Venus that proved Venus orbited the Sun and that Earth was not the center of the universe. Venus as a wandering star has been known since man first looked up into the night sky. It was not until 1962 that Mariner 2 showed that Venus would not support a tropical rain forest with lizards and skantly dressed nymphs. (See: Venus#Early_efforts) -- Kheider (talk) 19:38, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

I have a question

whats venus's distance from the sun. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.87.151.197 (talk) 21:04, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried reading the article? The information you want is in the box on the right hand side of the top. --Tango (talk) 21:23, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Pythagoras Needs Citation

The fact that Pythagoras is first credited with realizing Venus is both the morning and evening star needs a citation, because he was associated mythologically with a lot of discoveries probably made by his followers. Pythagoras also thought the earth orbited a "central fire" but no one credits him with the Copernican Revolution, and rightly so. The first Greek (or Arabic, Sumerian, etc.) to prove it should be noted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.21.123.155 (talk) 03:10, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree. The Venus tablet alone predates Pythagoras by centuries. Serendi^podous 13:51, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Radius and Volume Values on the Planet Pages

This is a concern regarding all the planet and planetoid pages, but I don't know where to post such. If anyone knows where this comment is better suited, I'll copy it there. Regarding the planet (and minor planet) pages, should we add a reference regarding the formulas used in calculating the following? "Mean Density" -- do the pages use Wikipedia Page definition for "Mean Density" (R1 = (2a+b)/3 -- a being Equatorial [or longest] radius; b being the Polar [or shortest] radius)? Or are the pages using another formula (e.g., an average between axes (a+b)/2? Regarding Radius, and its affect on Volume, are the Volume values calculated using the Volumetric Radius (yet another radius calc), or Mean Radius, or Average Radius? "Volume" -- The Volumetric Radius (R3 = the CubeRoot of a2b), is used to determine Volume for "spherical" ellipsoids (i.e, those with a relatively circular equatorial zone -- hence, a relatively constant a axis value, and a different b axis value. For irregular shapes (planetoids [most asteroids, many minor planets], and satellites [moons]) require more-complex formulas to determine Volume. The radii around their "equatorial" or "polar" region are not constant -- lumps, bumps, cookie-dough shaped irregular "spheres", etc. Bottom line to my rambling ... I think we need to be consistent in our labeling. If the pages show "Mean Radius" or "Volume" (or anything else, for that matter), one standard approach should be used. Since many technical astronomical sources are inconsistent, I understand that this is a challenge. Still, I think the page(s) should note what formulas are used for such (or, at the very least, reference if a certain page is using a different [non-Wikipedia-defined] formula. My assumption is if a planet page uses the term "Mean Radius" or "Volume", it will agree with the Wikipedia page defining "Mean Radius" and "Volume" calcs for planets, planetoids. Tesseract501 16:48, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

1)There are standard calculations and definations for these that professional astronomers use to obtain these values. As such all such values are consistant with each other. 2)No these values aren't perfect, and if necessary more complex models for things like shapes of planets, orbital paths etc.. may be used - but these still have significant errors associated with them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.168.44.143 (talk) 01:56, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Pythagoras

May I ask for a reference that "Pythagoras is usually credited with recognizing in the sixth century BC that the morning and evening stars were a single body". Although this information is present on many web pages, I cannot find any really reliable source. About a month ago I put "Citation needed" into the article, but nobody has noticed yet. Thank you very much. Jan.Kamenicek (talk) 18:13, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Reference provided. Best Wishes.Gallador (talk) 22:36, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Gallador beat me to it. I also had: "Mariner-Venus 1962 Final Project Report" (PDF). JPL: 3. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help) Gallador's looks the better of the two, though. —BillC ^talk 23:15, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. Jan.Kamenicek (talk) 10:32, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Units

Why aren't there any American Units when then worlds leading space body, NASA uses them almost exclusively? Nicholas.tan (talk) 19:43, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Astronomers use metric units. NASA does likewise, and has done so since the 1990s. The official position of its Planetary Data System is to use SI units. —BillC ^talk 21:50, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but the general population in America at least, which is most of WP's readership don't. Most Americans would know that the earth is 93 million miles away, not 150 mil km. It wouldnt hurt anyways? Nicholas.tan (talk) 21:53, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

It may be best to raise this question at Wikipedia:WikiProject Solar System, and abide by consensus there. Venus is a featured article, and part of the Solar system article series, itself a Featured topic. Other planetary article in the series adopt the same style as this one; if one should change, then they all should, to keep the topic consistent. —BillC ^talk 22:54, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

I do not think that most of WP's readership comes from the United States :-). English has become an international language, which is good for this encyclopedia. English Wikipedia has also become much more international than Wikipedias written in other languages and it is read all over the world. Jan.Kamenicek (talk) 00:12, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't believe we have any robust statistics on readership, but the last time we did a study of our editors, about 50% of enwp edits came from the US, then the UK, then various Anglophone and non-Anglophone nations, with the "tail" probably growing larger over time. It doesn't seem unreasonable to assume this roughly correlates to reader traffic.

As regards this article in particular, it's an interesting case. Normally we have "metric (imperial)" or "imperial (metric)" depending on the topic, but here it's "metric (astronomical)", at least in the infobox - a third one would be confusing. Temperatures are given as "C (F)", though, and I don't think there's any particular reason we shouldn't add imperial conversions to most of the distances in the text, which are just given as plain km. Shimgray | talk | 01:10, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

greenhouse effect

due to the greenhouse effect on venus it has a temperature of 475C not 460C and has 90 atmospheres —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.251.184.43 (talk) 17:43, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Colonization

In the short 'Colonization' part, it stated that the amounts of Acid in the atmosphere preclude any short term colonization. I followed the citations, but it didn't mention anything about that. Can someone remove that part, please? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.130.149.98 (talk) 13:29, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

the entire section seems abit of a moot point. Venus's atmosphere is hostile to life, and would rapidly erode any vehicle,structure within the atmosphere. It would be significantly easier and more useful to colonize a cold dead rock - of which there are plenty. This is the predominant opinion if you went around asking scientists, but sure enough you can no doubt siffen through the internet to find far fetched ideas as to how to make it happen.

Whilst there may be cause for discussion on this topic I don't believe it deserves such attention as to cover it on the main page of a planet - as it just clutters things up. Suggest removing the section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.168.44.143 (talk) 01:39, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Cant think of the name but there was a British astronomer who wrote a book about why colonizing Venus is impossible. Any water introduced would instantly become poisonous soda water, etc. Ben Bova describes the hazards of Venus nicely in his book of the same name.

The simplest way to make Venus habitable is to crash a sizable body into Venus, resetting its rotation back in line with the rest of the Solar system. Why has no one documented that Venus rotates in opposition to the rest of the Solar system? While no proof exists, only a large body collision could have stopped Venus' rotation and it will take a similar even to restore it.

As it stands, since Venus does not rotate relative to Sol, the Sun's energy is focused like a blowtorch on one area of Venus, super-heating it, and the thick atmosphere cant let the heat out.

Once humans can move asteroids safely, a few precise bombardments similar to Comet Shoemaker Levy 9 can not only reset Venus' rotation but may also release some atmosphere to space. Current technology fails, but who knows what will happen in a century or two? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.113.50.139 (talk) 07:38, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

it has come to my attention...

It has come to my attention that someone has mistaken Venus as the Greek goddess of love. I am sorry to say that the Greek goddess of love was Aphrodite and Venus in fact is the Roman goddess of love. I simply wanted to clear that up. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hugmedearly (talk • contribs) 00:15, 3 April 2009 (UTC) i agree that it is the roman goddess of love,but your missing a part of it.Its the roman goddess of love and beauty. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.145.64.25 (talk) 00:33, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Third Paragraph

The third paragraph uses weasel words and reads like original research. I've added 'Who?' tags to the weasel words. If someone can provide proper citation, that would be great. Thanks! -Sarfa (talk) 19:14, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

I wish some authority would make it a wikilaw that anyone who adds a "Citation Needed" should be forced to do the research himself to end the "citation needed" abuse.

Case in point from Salt: "Salt is salty (citation needed)" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.113.50.139 (talk) 07:42, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

No, that would put the burden on the person challenging the work. The burden really should lie with those posting the statement. If a challenged statement hasn't been cited after some period of time, I think it is reasonable to remove that statement per WP policy.—RJH (talk) 19:59, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Age of the Earth's crust

Given that the continents average about 2 billion years in age, the following statement seems curious:

Earth's crust is continually recycled by subduction at the boundaries of tectonic plates, and has an average age of about 100 million years, while Venus's surface is estimated to be about 500 million years old.[17]

Is it actually referring to the oceanic crust, which is much younger?[19]—RJH (talk) 17:28, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I was "bold" and changed it to "oceanic crust". It is somewhat unsatisfactory since it doesn't cover weathering of continental craters, but that's a little off topic anyway.—RJH (talk) 19:56, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Vandalism starts again

As soon as the protection is lifted in come the IP vandals. I suggest that the article be protected again. Previously it was for 1 month, then for 3 months, how about it be protected for longer this time, indefinitely would be good. HumphreyW (talk) 00:14, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree. The article seems complete and comprehensive enough at this point that I can't see where being under permanent semi-protected status would be a detriment to the entry or inhibit legitimate, sourced additions. The only thing being added by anon IP addresses at this time appear to be random character stings and genital references.--SiIIyLiIIyPiIIy (talk) 16:25, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree that this page gets an inordinate amount of purile vandalism. Perhaps it would be appropriate to present a warning message about topic vandalism on the edit page, much as is done with the Earth article. Kids may be less inclined to attempt the same vandalism when they see it has been done many times before.—RJH (talk) 19:54, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I think that's the semi-protected status HumphreyW and I were referring to. Basically, I think the question is, are there any anon IPs which are contributing notable and verifiable information to this article at this point? —Preceding unsigned comment added by SiIIyLiIIyPiIIy (talk • contribs) 15:23, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

I count 46 edits by anon IPs in that time. Exactly one was not vandalism, and that was the edit made on 27 April 2009 by anonymous IP editor 173.65.114.5, reverting vandalism in the previous edit by anonymous IP editor 216.48.130.15. I would say in light of this data that restoration of semi-protected status is fully justified.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 00:02, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

"Second planet" hatnote

No offense intended of course, but I would like to get rid of the (what I consider a nuisance) hatnote about the "second planet" redirect to this article, for the simple reason that almost nobody is going to look up Venus using the term "second planet"; it essentially adds two lines that are both distracting and of little value. I think it would be much better if the redirect were directed to the disambiguation page, or else have the "second planet" page serve as the disambiguation page. What say you?—RJH (talk) 20:16, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, to be honest I wasn't too keen on all the "planet" disambig thing, but I felt that since "ninth planet", "tenth planet" and "fifth planet" all had disambigs then the rest should too. Short of deleting them, I think making the disambigs the main articles is the best idea. Serendi^podous 20:22, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Venus in Culture

Given that the article has reached 81 Kb in size, I'd like to propose that the "Venus in human culture" section be spun out into a daughter article, per Earth in culture, and the content be significantly reduced in length according to the WP:SS guidelines (particularly using just the currently cited information). Any thoughts?—RJH (talk) 16:31, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

It could be split out, but that wouldn't shorten the article much on its own. Perhaps the exploration section should be summarised more (there is already a separate article to move an extra info to), as well. --Tango (talk) 16:39, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Makes sense. There is probably some merging needed as the split article is a little thin in places compared to this article's content.—RJH (talk) 22:05, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Citation requested

I attempted to find a confirmational citation for the following, but found no match so I moved it here.

To the Hebrews it was known as Noga ("shining"), Helel ("bright"), Ayeleth-ha-Shahar ("deer of the dawn") and Kohav-ha-'Erev ("star of the evening").

It is also unclear what this adds to the topic, since it just appears to be names and definitions. Please clarify before restoring. Thank you.—RJH (talk) 18:51, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

the venus

Venus is known as the Earth's "twin" because the two planets are so similar in size. Venus is commonly referred to as the Earth’s “sister” planet. Named for the Roman goddess of love by the same name, the planet Venus.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.184.149.126 (talk • contribs)

I added a mention of "Earth's twin". The others are already covered.—RJH (talk) 17:23, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Listed as only planet named after female figure

The article uses the wording "named after" and the assumption "Goddesses such as Gaia and Terra were named after the Earth, and not vice versa" to go around the fact that the planet Earth is culturally associated to female goddesses. The only difference is that initially the ancients didn't know the Earth was a planet, and the personification under Gaia, Terra and such occurred later than with other gods associated to astronomical bodies. Other planets, in any case, weren't necessarily named after gods, as astral bodies often play key roles in defining and sustaining gods by identification, being a sort of physical manifestation of the god in question. To put it one way; did someone name the planet Venus in the sky after the goddess Venus, or did the myth of Venus come up with the observation of the celestial body? You can't just use rhetoric to deny "planet Earth" is personified as female in our cultural imagination. You can make a note, if necessary, that the association to the astronomical body as such is relatively recent because previously we were sitting on Earth and didn't notice it was a planet like the ones in the sky. What is the article implying anyway? Evidently, the "Earth" goddesses weren't named after the planet as such, but named with what we are standing on (the "land"). The planetary association came later; "oh, wait, so what we're standing on, Terra Mater, is a planet like all those in the sky?" I just made an edit to reflect my critique; check it out! Who is like God? (talk) 14:46, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I would dispute that. Planet Earth is only identified as female in certain non-scientific, envrionmentalist contexts. The planet Venus was certainly named for the goddess, not the other way around. The Greeks had their own names for the planets for centuries- Venus (Aphrodite) was called Phospheros, or light, Mars (Ares) was called Pyreis or fiery, Mercury (Hermes) was called Stilbon, gleaming, etc. They borrowed the habit of naming planets after gods from the Babylonians. Serendi^podous 15:36, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Although Who is like God?'s edits were well intended, I think we should leave issue of the the personification of the Earth out of the article because it is somewhat off topic and would require more extensive citation to meet wikipedia standards. I would instead suggest directing that type of description on the Earth in culture page, and supplying suitable references.—RJH (talk) 17:46, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Maybe it would be easier to leave mention of 'the only female planet' out of the article altogether. It's not as if it adds greatly to knowledge of the subject, and it keeps engendering this debate which comes round from time to time. —BillC ^talk 18:16, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I kind of agree with you, even though it is a somewhat interesting tidbit.—RJH (talk) 19:28, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

First Interplanetary Mission

Appears to be bias in claiming NASA conducted the first interplanetary mission. Should be corrected inline with wiki article on interplanetary missions which contradicts this citing Russian probe passing within 100,000 miles of venus as the first. Will unify unless reference produced clarifying this articles claim. 18 july 2009 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.128.41.203 (talk) 14:29, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

From the article (emphasis added): "The first robotic space probe mission to Venus, and the first to any planet, began on February 12, 1961 with the launch of the Venera 1 probe. The first craft of the otherwise highly successful Soviet Venera program, Venera 1 was launched on a direct impact trajectory, but contact was lost seven days into the mission, when the probe was about 2 million km from Earth. It was estimated to have passed within 100 000 km from Venus in mid-May.^[69]"

The article then goes on to say that Mariner 2 was the first successful interplanetary mission, not the first attempted. The article makes it quite clear that the first such mission conducted was Venera 1. —BillC ^talk 00:04, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Don Mitchell web site as a reference

No offense intended, but for verification purposes I'd like to ask what makes Don P. Mitchell's web site a reliable source? The name is connected with multiple papers in computer science, but is he a recognized expert in Soviet space history as well? Thanks.—RJH (talk) 18:21, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Pioneer Venus Multiprobe

With regard to the number of probes this mission comprised, there were indeed four dedicated probes released into the atmosphere. The spacecraft bus, however, was the fifth probe, and was sent into the upper atmosphere, instrumented to return data before it was destroyed. —BillC ^talk 20:19, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

The NASA citation states only that there were four, so listing the spacecraft as a fifth "multiprobe" may be problematic... perhaps even bordering on OR. Is there a citation to show that NASA considered the Pioneer spacecraft their fifth microprobe? Thank you.—RJH (talk) 20:53, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

The National Space Science data Center describes how the Bus was designed to "transmit data to Earth until [it] was destroyed by the heat of atmospheric friction during its descent." Is that not a space probe – "an unmanned spacecraft designed to explore the solar system and transmit data back to earth"? If you would still prefer not to describe it as a probe, then I won't complain, but I think it would improve the article to have some mention of this ingenious and mass-economical aspect of the mission. —BillC ^talk 23:06, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

For me the issue is the use of the word "microprobe", which (as I understand it) is meant to convey a detachable probe that is carried on the main spacecraft. I certainly have no objection to a description of how the main spacecraft was destroyed, although it would be good to keep it compact per WP:SS. :-) Thanks.—RJH (talk) 16:50, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Radar resolution

I removed the following unsourced statement from the article because it appears to be wrong:

The best radar images obtainable from Earth revealed features no smaller than about 5 km across. More detailed exploration of the planet could only be carried out from space.

Per:

Campbell, Donald B. (October 20, 1989). "Styles of Volcanism on Venus: New Arecibo High Resolution Radar Data". Science. 246 (4928): 373–377. doi:10.1126/science.246.4928.373.

"Arecibo high-resolution (1.5 to 2 km) radar data of Venus..." —RJH (talk) 19:12, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Temperature higher than Mercury?

According to:

Beatty, J. Kelly; Petersen, Carolyn Collins; Chaikin, Andrew (1999). The New Solar System (4 ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 88. ISBN 0521645875.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

"When Mercury is closest to the Sun, its surface reaches about 740 K", which is 467° C. The book does agree that the surface temperature of Venus is hotter, but the value listed in this article is 460° C.—RJH (talk) 20:50, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Per the mercury article and cite: (Mercury) Surface temperatures range from about 90 to 700 K (−183 °C to 427 °C, −297 °F to 801 °F),[11] - kindly replace your cite tage after the disputed portion of the statement not the whole line, took me forever to locate where your tag was added and what it was REALLY addressing. Zotel - the Stub Maker (talk) 21:19, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Sorry about that. Well then I'm going to challenge the Mercury article entry because the journal article being cited does not list a temperature range (at least in the online PDF file I checked) and the above book contradicts it. The source for the Mercury article only gives an approximate temperature range (rounded to the nearest hundreds), so I think the contradiction still exists.—RJH (talk) 19:14, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Carter incident

The article claims

U.S. President Jimmy Carter reported having seen a UFO in 1969, which later analysis suggested was probably the planet.

Is there evidence for the "UFO" being Venus? The article Jimmy Carter UFO Incident claims that Carter reported the UFO to change colour (green->blue->red) which would not fit to Venus, and that Carter was certain it was not Venus, him being an amateur astronomer. So one of the two articles is wrong, apparently. --Roentgenium111 (talk) 13:05, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

If Venus were subject to significant levels of atmospheric distortion then it could potentially, if not likely, shift in color. I've seen that happen with bright stars close to the horizon; not so much with green as with red and blue. It's less likely with a planet, because they have a wider angular size.—RJH (talk) 17:02, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Phases?

I'm not understanding how the phases of Venus show that it necessarily must not orbit the earth in the last section of the article. Noting that the phases are "like the moon's" does nothing to further convince me that they are/were significant. I'm not saying it's wrong, but that it isn't complete enough to explain its significance.72.150.132.9 (talk) 23:37, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

I believe it is based on euclidean geometry and the concept of the phase angle. When a planet appears fully illuminated by the Sun, it's phase angle is 0°. Likewise, during a transit when only the dark side can be viewed, the phase angle is 180°. For a superior planet, there is a maximum phase angle it can possibly reach, which for any value can be exceeded by an interior planet. (The most extreme example would be a superior planet orbiting just beyond the Earth, which reaches a maximum phase angle slightly less than 90° as it is passed by.) This is only true for orbits that wouldn't overlap if they lay along the same plane, of course.—RJH (talk) 20:01, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Distance from the Sun

In the section on atmosphere it's stated Venus is further from the sun. Yet on the solar system diagram the order from the sun goes Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars. Am I missing something? I'm no astronomer so feel free to fill me in. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mosey Burns (talk • contribs) 16:01, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Are you referring to the statement that, "even though Venus is nearly twice Mercury's distance from the Sun"?—RJH (talk) 19:45, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Comparison

I did a brief comparison between Unsöld The New Cosmos (2001) and this page:

• Terrain distribution is 65% rolling plains (0 to 2 km), 27% deep lowlands (3 km), and 10% highlands (above 2 km). 85% is volcanic plains, rather than 80% listed here (based on a 1994 cite).
• There is no mention here of the 1932 discovery of a thick CO₂ atmosphere by W. S. Adams and Th. Dunham based on infrared spectra.[20]
• HCl, HF and sulfuric acid in atmosphere may result from chemical reactions of the atmosphere with surface minerals.
  • Fegley, B., Jr.; Klingelhöfer, G.; Lodders, K.; Widemann, T. (1997). "Geochemistry of Surface-Atmosphere Interactions on Venus". Venus II : Geology, Geophysics, Atmosphere, and Solar Wind Environment (PDF). Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press. pp. 591–636. Retrieved 2009-09-05. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |editors= ignored (|editor= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Doesn't mention dense cloud layers as being located in the troposphere, or the layers of haze. This is covered in the Atmosphere of Venus article but not summarized here. Perhaps the section needs to be updated to summarize the current version of the main article?
• Concentration of H₂SO₂ droplets is 10⁸ per m³. Also Unsöld mentions solid or liquid sulfur particles.
• The planet has no stratosphere. (This is not mentioned in the Atmosphere of Venus article either.)
• Unsöld mentions diurnal and annual variations in the upper atmosphere, and distinct thermal structures.

—RJH (talk) 18:05, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Surface image

I'm looking for a rectangular image of Venus' surface, like the lower one on File:Venus 1 to 10m quadrangle layout.png, but without the lettering, for use on the mapping template. Can anyone tell me where I can find one, please? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 15:22, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Units

The article uses both atmospheres and bars... which are almost the same but not quite and should not be used interchangeably or even in the same article since it can confuse people. In short, the units should be consistent. Stou (talk) 05:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Fixed. Ruslik_Zero 07:55, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Ruslik changed an instance giving only MPa to one giving both MPa and bar. I find no text in the article as of this date using atmospheres, aside from this sentence setting the table from an earth-reference framework for the benefit of earth inhabitants.

Venus has an extremely dense atmosphere, which consists mainly of carbon dioxide and a small amount of nitrogen. The atmospheric mass is 93 times that of Earth's atmosphere while the pressure at the planet's surface is about 92 times that at Earth's surface—a pressure equivalent to that at a depth of nearly 1 kilometer under Earth's oceans.

I don't entirely get this comment. The difference between a bar and an atmosphere is on the order of 1%, and I doubt any scientific pressure figure given in this article is accurate to 1%, which would be well below the variability margins for any atmospheric data I'm familiar with. Most pressure figures are given as two digit integers. Personally I'm content if all the Venera program figures are given in consistent units, which seems to be the case. It's not as if this is a page full of astronomy using the sidereal and solar day interchangeably by context. Now that would be a valid source of confusion. — MaxEnt (talk) 22:15, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Typing error

Greetings, there is an error on the article indicating As a result of Venus's relatively long solar day, one Venus year is about 1.92 Venus days long.[7] the reference is the number 7. the right value is 0.92 (simply divide 224.7 / 243 = 0.9246). Sure is an typing error on the source where you are taking the value (0.92 -> 1.92). Sorry i'cant change the value directly on the article, the page is protected (i'm editor on wiki spanish), Hprmedina (talk) 17:05, 23 September 2009 (UTC) pd:sorry, my native language is spanish...

Another thing, don't forget to change the value on the infobox, Hprmedina (talk) 17:12, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

ok, i already change the value, greetings, Hprmedina (talk) 14:06, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Please don't change it, the original figure is correct. Sunrise to sunrise is 116.75 days. Orbital period is 224.7 days. 224.7/116.75 = 1.92 days.HumphreyW (talk) 14:13, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

ok, you are right! i'm not considering the retrograde rotation, sorry. Greetings Hprmedina (talk) 17:50, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Axial tilt

Does this bit need rewording - "The planet's minute axial tilt (less than three degrees, compared with 23 degrees for Earth)..."? On first reading this, I thought, "Hang on, Venus has an axial tilt of about 177 degrees, way higher than Earth's 23." Then I realised what the sentence was trying to convey, i.e. 180 minus 177 = 3, and that's a small amount of tilt. I don't know enough about astronomy to be able to reword this so that it is both technically accurate, and clear to the reader. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.70.51.129 (talk) 07:01, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Surface illumination, visibility of sun

We can't see the surface through the thick atmosphere. What would the sun look like from the ground up? A hazy glare? What is the nature of the surface illumination? What spectrum and exposure were the ground probes using to take their pictures? — MaxEnt (talk) 20:06, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Like in a dull day on Earth (except that the sky is yellow). Ruslik_Zero 20:48, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

I seem to recall reading somewhere that refraction from the dense Venusian atmosphere would make the distant surface appear to curve upward slightly, assuming you could see that far.—RJH (talk) 22:05, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Learning about venus

well i just started learning about Venus in school and i have to do a project on it. this is becoming a little hard for me.... but since i came to this website i have learned a little more about Venus. Thank you!!!!!!!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.177.176.141 (talk) 23:52, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Some one please fix the second sentence: Should read "After the Sun and the Moon, Venus is the brightest natural object in the sky" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.156.153.16 (talk) 18:40, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Magnetic Field

In "Magnetic field and core" it is implied by "and smaller (i.e. closer to the planet) than Earth's" that EM fields have a physical size. This is inaccurate and misleading, so it should be removed. Smcmanus4188 (talk) 11:28, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

The editor was probably talking about the magnetosphere, but didn't make it clear. It looks like M. Ruslik0 has already corrected the text. Thanks.—RJH (talk) 17:55, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Venera program

The Venera program ended with VeGa, which is the Russian abbreviation for Venera-Gallai (Venus-Halley). The section on radar mapping should not just be about Megellan, it should include a discussion of the Pioneer map and the Venera-15/16 mission. Venera-15/16 was far more important than the single sentence in this article implies. 24.16.88.14 (talk) 01:29, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I think it is the Observations and explorations of Venus article that needs work. This article should just be using a WP:Summary style version of the forked article.—RJH (talk) 15:11, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Temp w/o greenhouse effect?

Presently article says: "Without the greenhouse effect caused by the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the temperature at the surface of Venus would be quite similar to that on Earth." This is rather strange statement. Considering that Venus is significantly closer to Sun than Earth, I think this can't be true. What does it mean exactly, anyway? "If Earth would be put in Venus orbit, the temperature on Earth would not change"? (Not true). "If one would replace 92 atm CO2 atmosphere with 1 atm pure N2 one (i.e. one w/o greenhouse effect), Venus will have Earth-like temps"? (Still likely not true, and feels arbitrary).

I propose removing that phrase altogether.88.100.47.221 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 07:12, 1 March 2010 (UTC).

I don't see a source for the statement mentioned above, and what is claimed would violate the laws of physics. Venus is much hotter due in part to receiving higher solar radiation, and in part because of it's much higher atmospheric pressure. Venus' very high albedo precludes significant heating of the surface, the first step in any credible greenhouse effect claim. Venus couldn't possibly have a significant greenhouse effect, because there simply isn't much shortwave radiation reaching the surface of the planet and being re-emitted as long wave radiation for the CO2 to absorb. There is no way this could be a true statement, and it should be removed. It's impossible to tell what would happen to Venus's temps if the atmosphere composition was radically altered. It is much more simple to tell what would happen if density changes. It's called the Combined Gas Law;“ The ratio between the pressure-volume product and the temperature of a system remains constant.” and is called a law for a reason. So the statement above must go. 209.152.76.122 (talk) 19:03, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

The energy of light that is absorbed by Venus is slightly less than that absorbed by Earth. This due to the much higher reflectivity of the Venusian clouds. So, if the carbon dioxide atmosphere were replaced with one consisting of nitrogen, the temperature on the Venus' surface would be lower than that on Earth's surface now. As to the green house effect, you seem not to understand that the amount of light reaching the surface does not matter much if the atmosphere is almost completely opaque to the infrared radiation. The surface in this case can not be cooled radiatively, which means that the only remaining cooling mechanism is convection. However convection can only proceed if the temperature profile in the (dry) atmosphere is adiabatic. Taking into account the pressure on the surface, this means that the surface temperature is going to very high (high lapse rate). Ruslik_Zero 19:38, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Not accounting for the atmospheres, the surface temperature of Venus, Earth, and Mars would be much more a like since all 3 are located near the habitable zone of the Sun.[21] The black body temperature of both Venus and Earth are similar (below 0 F). Perhaps it should be simply restated as, "the temperature at the surface of Venus would be much more similar to that on Earth." -- Kheider (talk) 19:53, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Global warming skeptics have been targeting the idea that Venusian temperatures are due to a runaway greenhouse effect. If they are indeed trying to spread FUD (Fear Uncertainty Doubt) on this matter they are doing a good job, since they are certainly making me confused on the matter. Possibly somebody with a better handle on the science might consider clarifying the matter? I'm a bit surprised the skeptics haven't altered this article already. MrG 71.36.244.149 (talk) 12:31, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

The runaway greenhouse effect on Venus was known long before the eco-extremists learned about it. Venus is after all, much closer to the Sun than the Earth is. Claiming a runaway greenhouse effect over a billion years is much different than claiming one over 100 years... -- Kheider (talk) 13:59, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

I think a runaway greenhouse effect is much more extreme than the garden variety effect we're generating. The two shouldn't be confused.—RJH (talk) 14:22, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

The story I'm getting from climate skeptics is that high temperatures on Venus are not due to any greenhouse effect but rather to high pressure, and that it would be just as hot with an N2 atmosphere. I find that hard to believe. MrG 71.36.244.149 (talk) 02:16, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

I's explained well in the article :The permanent cloud cover means that although Venus is closer than Earth to the Sun, the Venusian surface is not as well lit. Without the greenhouse effect caused by the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the temperature at the surface of Venus would be quite similar to that on Earth. Please ignore these lame attempts to confuse people.--90.179.235.249 (talk) 01:55, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I know how it's supposed to work -- CO2 is opaque to thermal IR, N2 is transparent -- and I'm not buying the skeptic story. However, misinformation has a tendency to spread (sort of like malware in general) and I suspect the matter's going to come up here again. But not from me, nothing more for me to say here, over and out. Cheers -- MrG 71.36.244.149 (talk) 02:16, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

As the original statement appears speculative in nature and lacks a source, I agree it should be removed. After all, the original runaway greenhouse was likely caused by water, rather than carbon dioxide.[22] The statement should be replaced by a statement about how the solar energy received at the orbit of Venus is about twice that received by the Earth.—RJH (talk) 02:24, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Unsourced statements

I have been unable to find a suitable source for this full statement:

• • • Not that it's a big deal or anything but it says the mean temp of Venus is 460 degrees Celcius, 735 K. That would imply that 0 degrees Celcius was approximately 275 K. But is is not approximately 273.15 degrees Celcius? I know I'm nitpicking but wouldn't it be more logical to say 733 K? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.17.44.143 (talk) 22:02, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

• Lakotan spirituality refers to Venus as the daybreak star, and associates it with the last stage of life and wisdom.

This doesn't appear in a Lakotan-English dictionary. It has been tagged as needing a source since last July, so I removed it. Likewise I removed the following statement which has been tagged since July:

• The ancient Chinese called the star Tai Bai (太白) if sighted in the evening, and Qi Ming (启明) in the morning, and it is both a representation of an important Taoist deity and a symbol of war.

Most sources list the Chinese name of Venus as something like "T'ai pai", and make no mention of the morning star equivalent. To maintain this article as FA, a reliable source is an absolute must.—RJH (talk)

• it dose not say that it is Earths evil twin, as people saw it it —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.159.23.55 (talk) 22:34, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from Wilkinsondarren, 14 April 2010

{{editsemiprotected}} There is some evidence of active convergent and divergent plate boundaries on Venus, meaning that active plate tectonics may be operating on the planet. It is likely that the mode of plate tectonics is markedly different to that on Earth due to the distinct lack of water - presumably making the rheology of the Venutian lithosphere more brittle. Prof Whaler, University of Edniburgh

Wilkinsondarren (talk) 15:40, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

That's interesting. It must be a pretty recent result because (unless I'm not understanding properly) papers from 2006-7[23][24] still seem to claim a lack of Earth-like plate tectonics in the present era on Venus. Would you happen to know of an online reference we might use? Thank you.—RJH (talk) 16:50, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Marking  Not done for now. WP:RS should help you. --Mikemoral♪♫ 22:57, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Axial tilt

In the side panel it states "Axial tilt 177.3". In the main body it states, "The planet's minute axial tilt (less than three degrees...". For the sake of avoiding confusion, should the tilt be expressed in a consistent fashion? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Myomancer (talk • contribs) 07:13, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Pending changes

This article is one of a number selected for the early stage of the trial of the Wikipedia:Pending Changes system on the English language Wikipedia. All the articles listed at Wikipedia:Pending changes/Queue are being considered for level 1 pending changes protection.

The following request appears on that page:

Comments on the suitability of theis page for "Pending changes" would be appreciated.

Please update the Queue page as appropriate.

Note that I am not involved in this project any much more than any other editor, just posting these notes since it is quite a big change, potentially

Regards, Rich Farmbrough, 00:32, 17 June 2010 (UTC).

Sidereal rotation period?

Why is this value negative? What is the implication? SharkD  Talk  20:47, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

It shouldn't be; the period is a length of time, and therefore can't physically be negative. I nixed the '-'. siafu (talk) 21:10, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

It is negative because Venus rotates the opposite direction from Earth. The '-' is not just there for fun, it is there to show the direction of rotation. HumphreyW (talk) 23:43, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

It's probably handy for wikipedia-using time travelers visiting Venus in the past... grins. Anyway, the Venus Fact Sheet lists a value of "Sidereal rotation period (hrs) -5832.5".—RJH (talk) 17:10, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Resurfacing timing question

In the surface geology subtopic it says that Venus surface undergoes a complete recycle every 100 million years, while surface age is estimated to be about 500 million years. How is that possible? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Scoldpadda (talk • contribs) 06:43, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

The 100 myr figure is for how long it takes for a complete resurfacing. So every 500 myr, Venus spends 100 myr resurfacing. (There's another 100 myr figure listed, but that's for the age of the Earth's oceanic crust.)—RJH (talk) 18:46, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Venus craters question

Why are the craters on Venus in prestine condition?

The article stays that more than 85% of craters on Venus are in good condition and they are not degrading as those on Earth and Moon. I understand that wind erosion is one of the most harmful factors for Earth structures. But on Venus there is wind that it slow but so heavy that it lifts small stones and carries huge amount of dust. Why doesn't this wind impact the craters? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Scoldpadda (talk • contribs) 05:35, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Earth's water cycle is a far more powerful erosion factor. -- Kheider (talk) 06:39, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Sun rises from East

In the current version of the article it is said that the sun rises from West and sets East. The fact is that the very directions south, north, east, west are defined by the rotation of a body. They are defined in a way that the direction of rotation is East. Since Venus rotates in the opposite directon in comparison with the other planets, it will be more accurate to say that the Venus north pole points at the opposite direction compared to the north pole on the other planets. What do you think? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.236.167.32 (talk) 21:05, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Can you find a reliable cite that will corroborate your statement regarding Venus? Thanks.—RJH (talk) 22:18, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I can't find a reliable cite, but also there isn't any cite on the page, showing that the sun on Venus rises from West. However on the article here on wikipedia [Cardinal direction] are defined so that East is the direction of rotation of a body. Venus rotates on its axis in the opposite direction of its orbital direction. That makes the sidereal day longer then the solar day (and so it is said in this article). That means that the sun will pass faster in the sky in the sky against the direction of rotation (as viewed from Venus). The only way I could imagine for the sun to rise from the west on a rotating body would be if the body rotates in the same direction as it orbits around the sun, but with longer period (if a year is shorter then a day). It's complicated to explain, but if you visualize the rotating bodies you can get my point. The google search for the rising and setting of sun on Venus didn't gave any good explanation. There were answers on yahoo answers that said the sun rises from west (without explanations), but I don't think that's credible. What do you think?—Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.73.140.202 (talk • contribs)

The sunrise direction on Venus is cited by the Planetary Society reference at the end of the paragraph. Cites can apply to more than one sentence.—RJH (talk) 16:28, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Issue arises because there are two possible ways to define which pole is north. The convention that seems to be most frequently-used for our solar system is to take whichever pole is on the same side of the ecliptic solar system's invariable plane as Earth's north pole as the object's north pole. The mathematically-sensible convention is to use the object's rotation to define which pole is which. For a body with prograde rotation, these definitions give the same result, for a body with retrograde rotation the two definitions give different results. Using the ecliptic-based definition based on the invariable plane (i.e. the one that people actually use, more's the pity), on Venus the Sun rises in the west. Icalanise (talk) 21:14, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

(corrected above comment: should refer to the invariable plane not the ecliptic) Icalanise (talk) 20:44, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Isn't it good to clarify that in the article? I mean I'm not an astronomer, that's why I haven't edited the article, but I just saw the definition of East on another article in wikipedia, and there it was defined as the direction of rotation. No word for East defined in a way that will make the North pole of the body in the same direction as the other bodies' North in the solar system. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.236.167.32 (talk) 22:23, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Venus's minimum distances

JPL Planetary Fact sheet minimum distance values are never correct. The statement on Mars gets falsified (after rounding) in 3013, Jupiter in 3588. The statement on Venus does hold up much better, and in fact the nearest violation to present comes in -213504. A case could be made for including it, but not for the statement that it is a matter of having greater eccentricities of both planets.

Not much different eccentricities are necessary to lower the distance to 38.1 Gm. In fact, given the mean elements from Meeus's Astronomical Algorithms, the (mean) planets could have approached to with 38 Gm about 13.9 centuries ago, and 37.5 Gm 61.6 centuries ago. This assumes the planets are lined up for a transit with Earth at perihelion and Venus at aphelion. That hasn't been possible for a long time; the alignment is unfavorable for close approaches and is getting worse.

That ideal lineup would only be possible if the mean longitudes of perihelion were 180 degrees apart; in fact they were 33 degrees apart 13.9 centuries ago, and the gap was and is decreasing. The longitudes would be predicted to coincide in 52 centuries. Since the variation in the Earth's heliocentric distance is much greater than Venus's, the closest approaches of any century for a very long time will occur when the Earth is near perihelion. Because of the small gap between perihelion longitudes, Venus will then be closer to the Sun than average. The declining eccentricity of Venus offsets this to some extent, because perihelion distances increase as eccentricities decrease. (In fact, in the -213504 approach I mentioned above, Venus had a below average heliocentric distance and the minimum distance would have been less with a circular orbit. Its eccentricity was actually much higher than today's).The current decline of the eccentricity of Venus ends about 130 centuries from now, but the Earth's will continue to shrink. Eventually the heliocentric distance of Venus varies more than Earth's, the closer approaches will occur nearer its aphelion, and .lower eccentricities for it will tend to maximize the distances of the closest approaches approach But this will change back again, and whether lower or greater eccentricities will favor greater distances will too. Saros136 (talk) 04:48, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Do you have any reliable reference for these statements? I undid your revisions because you provided no references to back your figures. If you have reliable references then the page can be updated, but not right now with nothing to back your figures. HumphreyW (talk) 05:25, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

The distance calculations are made by Solex, a high-accuracy program used extensively on Wikipedia by both Kheider and myself (and on this article in fact) I'm not planning to put in a different minimum distance. In fact, as I said the figure could be considered a minimum since it holds for such a long time. The explanation of the fallacy of the explanations-why a declining eccentricity can either increase of decrease minimum distances-is simple and common knowledge of the properties of an ellipse that is already possessed by the other editors on the subject. The other details are not going on the article page, so there are no OR issues there, but they use the mean orbital elements of Astronomical Algorithms, by Jean Meeus. Saros136 (talk) 06:01, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm not a big fan of including unqualified minimum distances in an article. Clearly, no one can make calculations accurate enough for millions of years to establish that, so each statement is only valid in a limited time frame. With no qualification, it is vague, and can sometimes be proven false but never true over the very long term. Saros136 (talk) 06:22, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

I'll leave in JPL's distance for now. But here's proof that they cannot be trusted-note the 3013 approach, which is barely over 55.6 Gm, whereas the fact sheet gives 55.7 Gm. I posted that on my Google documents page long ago. Saros136 (talk) 12:08, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

It is true that I should post more support. Later, I will. Saros136 (talk) 12:42, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

But the Earth and Venus infoboxes have all the information showing that the longitudes of perigee of the planets is about 30 degrees apart, hence at the closest approaches Venus is farther from the Sun than average. The longitude of perihelion is longitudes of ascending node plus argument of perihelion. Saros136 (talk) 12:58, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

I haven't posted the results yet, but I did find that from now until 20,000, none of the 671 closest approaches happened with Venus at a greater-than-average distance from the Sun. Saros136 (talk) 04:12, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Cartography

So, from the last paragraph of "geography" section follows, that coordinate system on 1981 map in that section is different from the modern one, because the location of prime meridian changed since then. As far as I know, it was changed by IAU in 1985 as was the direction to the North pole, which is by the way not less important for the coordinate system definition, than a point prime meridian passes through. A natural question then is how significant was that shift of coordinates, how close coordinates of surface features on that map are to their modern coordinates?

In general, I think, we need a good article on Venus cartography, where in particular the difference and transformations between historical Venus coordinate systems should be described in detail. I suspect that we don't have such articles for Mars and the Moon as well so far.

As a side note, the lead should also say about Venera-15, Venera-16, because I believe polar region (latitudes 30-90 degrees north) radar mapping by these orbiters with 1-2 km resolution to be quite detailed as well. And an earlier Pioneer Venus mission was also quite a big breakthrough in mapping.Cmapm (talk) 21:40, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Less viscous or more viscous?

Shouldn't this phrase... "its crust is too strong to subduct without water to make it less viscous." ...actually read "without water to make it MORE viscous?" SpacemanSpiff27 (talk) 05:00, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

I doubt it. Water makes it less viscous, and without water it becomes "too strong". Perhaps there could a change in word order: "without water to make it less viscous, its crust is too strong to subduct." HumphreyW (talk) 05:14, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

: Ahh, I see. Your re-phrasing has made me re-think the sentence and it now makes sense. I'm not sure how I reached a different interpretation on the day I made my comment. Thanks. SpacemanSpiff27 (talk) 06:07, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Magnitudes

The revision of 26 November 2010 changes both the maximum and minimum magnitudes of Venus, based on a magazine. The reference can't be checked by the Internet, for the magazine site only shows the name of the article, not the data.

The former data are compatible with the Wikipedia article about Apparent Magnitude, which in turn is based on NASA Data Center.

I won't revert the revision, for I'm not an expert on the subject, but I think this issue should be adequatedly treated, in order to keep the quality of this excellent article. Claudio M Souza (talk) 00:40, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Good point Claudio. I have left a message on the editor's Talk page, alerting him to your message, and asking him to clarify the situation. See User talk:Planet photometry#Venus. Dolphin (t) 01:01, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Planet photometry's edit seems fairly accurate. I have often read that Venus gets to -4.7 or -4.8, and the NASA Venus Fact Sheet maximum of -4.6 has always seemed a little on the low side to me. Planet photometry did create the article Phase curve (astronomy) and I can find no obvious fault with it. -- Kheider (talk) 02:17, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Claudio M Souza's point is that the article Apparent magnitude specifies a maximum of -4.67 but cites a web-based NASA source that specifies -4.6. Since the most recent edit, Venus nominates Venus's greatest luminosity as apparent magnitude -4.9, which contradicts what is stated in Apparent magnitude, and cites a source that is not web-based and so is not readily compared with the NASA source. We need to cite the highest-quality source in both articles, and to ensure both articles nominate the same figure. Dolphin (t) 04:28, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

I think that verifiability is the key here. It might very well be true that the magnitude goes to -4.9, but it is difficult to verify. I'm sure everyone already know this but just to refresh: "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth". HumphreyW (talk) 05:39, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

• I would be careful doubting Tony Mallama since he may be more credible than NASA when it comes to apmags and phase angles for Venus and Mercury.
• I know there has been this type of debate over at Mercury as well.
• I am the one that reverted Venus from -4.89 to -4.67 on the apmag article. -- Kheider (talk) 06:59, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Article Title Should Be Venus (planet) to match other planets.

Disambiguation shows (planet) but the article title does not. Other planets do. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fishback (talk • contribs) 19:54, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

No, the article title needs to be compliant with WP:PRECISION.—RJH (talk) 20:01, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Mercury seems to be the only planet with a disambiguated title. Even were consistency the goal to aim for, adding (planet) wouldn't be the way to do it. Shimgray | talk | 20:14, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Spelling mistake

In the second paragraph, volcanism is spelled "vulcanism" as in start trek. lol

Vulcanism is just a valid spelling variant of volcanism. The word existed long before Star Trek came along.—RJH (talk) 23:52, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Edit Request - Surface and atmospheric science

{{Edit semi-protected}}

As I do not have the appropriate permissions, please make changes on behalf to this article under the "Surface and atmospheric science" section (assuming it is an approved change). I understand that I am supposed to provide a copy and paste-able edit, however I am simply unsure if my recommendation will meet certain standards. My proposals are to add the dates of the Venera 8, 9 and 10 atmospheric entires to the article, particularly Venera , possibly just add them in brackets after they are first mentioned. Also I suggest the addition of the fact that Venera 9 took pictures of the surface of another planet for the first time in history (Reference: http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photos/milestones-space-photography/#/first-planet-surface_6422_600x450.jpg).

• Venera 8 entered the atmosphere on 22 July 1972 - Reference: http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/masterCatalog.do?sc=1972-021A
• Venera 9 entered the atmosphere on 22 October 1975 - Reference: http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/masterCatalog.do?sc=1975-050D
• Venera 10 entered the atmosphere on 25 October 1975 - Reference: http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/masterCatalog.do?sc=1975-054D

LlamaLlamaLamp (talk) 11:08, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Actually if you had just 4 more edits you would then be autoconfirmed and be able to edit semi-protected articles yourself. See Wikipedia:Protection_policy#semi "... at least four days old and has ten or more edits to Wikipedia ...". HumphreyW (talk) 11:23, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

What a rubbish suggestion. It is far more collegial to put this up for discussion. As to the request itself, as LlamaLlamaLamp correctly noted, this is a proper discussion rather than a request. --78.35.212.131 (talk) 17:40, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I think it would be fine to include that information in the article. I was "bold" and made corresponding edits. Please feel free to revert if this is inappropriate. Thanks.—RJH (talk) 18:23, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I Second this. The photos are also already in the Commons under Venera. I will try to send the clarification notice to the OTRS later today so the images should stay if posted. --Xession (talk) 18:27, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

So it looks like the copyright issue has been cleared up. That's goodness.—RJH (talk) 17:12, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

It has, but I continue to be busy and have since neglected to get the email sent to the OTRS. Essentially, the images were given to the NSSDC during the Soviet years in a science exchange program. Almost everything exchanged was given without explicit conditions, meaning there was no copyright claim on them, and they were actually given to the NSSDC, which is why the numerous places around the web, you'll see them credited to NASA or the NSSDC.

Marking Done by RJHall. -Atmoz (talk) 14:34, 29 January 2011 (UTC)