Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
The first exoplanet discovered orbiting a main-sequence star. Kepler-20e: 1,004 ± 14 (735 °C) [27] <0.76 M 🜨 [27] The first planet smaller than Earth discovered after PSR B1257+12 b. Venus (for reference) 735 (462 °C) [28] 0.815 M 🜨 [28] Hottest planet in the Solar System.
The first successful flyby Venus probe was the American Mariner 2 spacecraft, which flew past Venus in 1962, coming within 35,000 km. A modified Ranger Moon probe, it established that Venus has practically no intrinsic magnetic field and measured the temperature of the planet's atmosphere to be approximately 500 °C (773 K; 932 °F). [19]
Venus is the place of the first interplanetary human presence, mediated through robotic missions, with the first successful landings on another planet and extraterrestrial body other than the Moon. Currently in orbit is Akatsuki , and other probes routinely use Venus for gravity assist manoeuvres capturing some data about Venus on the way.
The thick troposphere also makes the difference in temperature between the day and night side small, even though the slow retrograde rotation of the planet causes a single solar day to last 116.5 Earth days. The surface of Venus spends 58.3 days in darkness before the sun rises again behind the clouds.
The full cycle from new to full to new again takes 584 days (the time it takes Venus to overtake the Earth in its orbit). Venus (like the Moon) has 4 primary phases of 146 days each. The planet also changes in apparent size from 9.9 arc seconds at full (superior conjunction) up to a maximum of 68 arc seconds at new (inferior conjunction). [1]
In 1962, Mariner 2, the first successful mission to Venus, measured the planet's temperature for the first time, and found it to be "about 500 degrees Celsius (900 degrees Fahrenheit)." [ 14 ] Since then, increasingly clear evidence from various space probes showed Venus has an extreme climate, with a greenhouse effect generating a constant ...
At the top of the clouds, the wind speed on Venus reaches up to 95 m/s (340 km/h; 210 mph), circling the planet approximately every four Earth days in a phenomenon known as "super-rotation". [13] Compared to the Venusian solar day of 118 Earth days, colonies freely floating in this region could therefore have a much shorter day-night cycle ...
The planet has an albedo that depends on the characteristics of its surface and atmosphere, and therefore only absorbs a fraction of radiation. The planet absorbs the radiation that isn't reflected by the albedo, and heats up. One may assume that the planet radiates energy like a blackbody at some temperature according to the Stefan–Boltzmann ...