Venus (Sol II)
Venus orbits the Sun at a distance of 108 million kilometres. It takes 225 days to complete one of these orbits. It is a terrestrial planet similar to Earth with a diameter of 12,104 km, except that it is covered in a thick, poisonous atmosphere. The other terrestrial planets (earth-like) are Mercury, Earth and Mars.
Right now, the ESA probe Venus Express is orbiting this planet and sending back more detailed information than we have ever seen before.
The south pole of Venus as revealed by Venus Express. The left side is in sunlight and appears as it would to our eyes, but the right side is in shadow and is shown in infra-red. Dark areas represent thicker cloud, lighter areas thinner cloud. The vortex over the south pole has a counterpart over Venus' north pole. |
An artist's impression of Venus Express orbiting Venus. |
On June 8th 2005, Venus passed in front of the Sun, in an event called a transit. This happens because Venus orbits closer to the Sun than the Earth does. So, very rarely, it happens to come between us and the Sun. On these occasions astronomers can use measurements of the transit to calculate the size of Venus and the size of the solar system. These photographs were taken on the day, using the highly technical Spacepod solar viewer (a monocular stuck into a cardboard box - see below).
 These two large pictures show the inside of the Spacepod solar viewer. you can see the disk of light that is the projected image of the Sun. The little dot near the bottom of the Sun's disk is the planet Venus. |
 This picture has a clearer view of the Sun because the cloud has cleared. Venus is roughly the same size as the Earth. So an observer on Mars watching an Earth transit would see something very similar to this. The Sun is obviously very big. |
 The smaller pictures are enhanced parts of the bigger ones above. These show the Sun in more detail and the little disk of Venus crossing the lower part of the image. |
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For more information about the transit have a look at the BAAS site and the NASA site.
WARNING
Do not attempt to observe the Sun without adopting a safe method. You can lose your sight. The Spacepod Sun page has a safe and fun solar viewing method that you can use. This was the same method used by the Spacepod Crew to photograph the Transit.