Venus TOP STORY

Venus Express Update

© ESA

Venus Express coverage of Venus: 3 February to 2 March 2013

The European Space Agency has released its periodic report on the research being conducted the Venus Express orbiter. This one includes the end of the twenty-third eclipse season, end of the fourteenth Earth occultation season and continuation of the surface imaging campaign.


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Venus TOP STORIES

Venus As Seen From Saturn by Cassini

© NASA/JPL/SSI

Venus as seen by Cassini in orbit around Saturn

Peering over the shoulder of giant Saturn, through its rings, and across interplanetary space, NASA's Cassini spacecraft spies the bright, cloudy terrestrial planet, Venus. The vast distance from Saturn means that Venus only shows up as a white dot, just above and to the right of the image center.

Venus

When a Planet Behaves Like a Comet

When a Planet Behaves Like a Comet

ESA's Venus Express has made unique observations of Venus during a period of reduced solar wind pressure, discovering that the planet's ionosphere balloons out like a comet's tail on its nightside.


Venus

Transit of Venus To Be Observed from Saturn

Transit of Venus To Be Observed from Saturn

This graphic shows the path of Venus across the face of the sun on Dec. 21, 2012, as will be seen by NASA's Cassini spacecraft in the Saturn system. This will be the first time a spacecraft has tracked a transit of a planet in our solar system from beyond Earth orbit.


Venus

Have Venusian Volcanoes Been Caught in the Act?

Have Venusian Volcanoes Been Caught in the Act?

Six years of observations by ESA's Venus Express have shown large changes in the sulphur dioxide content of the planet's atmosphere, and one intriguing possible explanation is volcanic eruptions.


Venus

Chasing clouds on Venus

Chasing clouds on Venus

Clouds regularly punctuate Earth's blue sky, but on Venus the clouds never part, for the planet is wrapped entirely in a 20 km-thick veil of carbon dioxide and sulphuric dioxide haze. This view shows the cloud tops of Venus as seen in ultraviolet light by the Venus Express spacecraft on 8 December 2011, from a distance of about 30 000 km.


Venus

Cold Layer in the Atmosphere of Venus

Cold Layer in the Atmosphere of Venus

Venus Express has spied a surprisingly cold region high in the planet's atmosphere that may be frigid enough for carbon dioxide to freeze out as ice or snow.


Venus

Venus: An Engineering Problem

Venus: An Engineering Problem

Hot, toxic, and murky, Venus serves as an extraordinary engineering challenge, according to Jim Garvin. Venus is bizarre. One day on Venus is nearly as long as one year on Earth. It rotates about its axis in the opposite direction of all the other planets in our solar system.


Venus

Venus Thrills Millions of People Around the Earth

Venus Thrills Millions of People Around the Earth Video in Story

It is one of those rare events that captures the imagination of people around the Earth for more than a few minutes. While the headlines were filled with what is considered newsworthy yesterday, people around the world took the time, if the weather permitted, and location, to view an event most will likely never see again.


Venus

Last Transit of Venus For A Century

Last Transit of Venus For A Century

On Tuesday, 5 June 2012, Venus will cross the face of the sun - as seen from Earth beginning at 22:09 UT (6:09 PM EDT). These transits are rare - they occur in pairs and only very century or so. The last transit was in 2004. The next one will be in 2117. Below are a series of links to various resources you can use to best appreciate this once in a lifetime experience.


Venus

Venus, A Planetary Portrait of Inner Beauty

Venus, A Planetary Portrait of Inner Beauty

A Venus transit across the face of the Sun is a relatively rare event -- occurring in pairs with more than a century separating each pair. There have been all of 53 transits of Venus across the Sun between 2000 B.C. and the last one in 2004.


Venus

Video: Space Weather - Explosions on Venus

Video: Space Weather - Explosions on Venus Video in Story

In the grand scheme of the solar system, Venus and Earth are almost the same distance from the Sun. Yet the planets differ dramatically: Venus is some 100 times hotter than Earth and its days more than 200 times longer.


Venus

Counting Down to the Transit of Venus

Counting Down to the Transit of Venus

Three months before the last transit of Venus this century, scientists are gathering at the Observatoire de Paris to finalize their observation plans in a workshop supported by the Europlanet Research Infrastructure and the EGIDE/PHC Sakura Program.


Venus

New map hints at Venus's wet, volcanic past

New map hints at Venus's wet, volcanic past

Venus Express has charted the first map of Venus's southern hemisphere at infrared wavelengths. The new map hints that our neighbouring world may once have been more Earth-like, with both, a plate tectonics system and an ocean of water.



More top stories from June.