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Venus Revealed
by David Harry Grinspoon

In all the news and excitement being generated by missions to Mars, it is sometimes hard to remember that there is another neighbouring planet that is probably just as fascinating: Venus. I realised that after reading fictional books and factual articles on Mars, I haven't been reading much on Venus. I hope to rectify that by reading this book.

Well the book met my expectations. Subtitled "A New Look Below the Clouds of Our Mysterious Twin Planet", I found out many facts and glanced at amazement at the recent information (and photos) on Venus that had been found out recently by probes like Magellan.

The book starts off by looking at how Venus was seen in ancient history, especially in Mayan and Aztec civilisations. In just one chapter, Venus is revealed as being very central to those civilisations, whose motion as seen from Earth was governing their calendars.

In the next chapter, we see how Venus came to be viewed through the telescope. Like canals on Mars, early telescopic observations revealed 'natural channels' on Venus. Observations of patches on Venus led to conflicting views on Venus's orbital period (24 hours to over 200 days). But during this time, Venus was considered a (younger) twin of Earth, possibly a very wet planet judging from its cloud cover. It was only when observations in the microwave and infra-red region were made that it was discovered that Venus was giving off a lot of heat, leading to the new image of a desert planet.

It wasn't until space probes like the Soviet's Venera series and American Mariner series were sent that we began to get a very different and dramatic picture of Venus: one of a very hot planet, with an atmosphere of sulfuric compounds at crushing atmospheric pressures. One of the more interesting aspects of this chapter is the different approaches the Soviets and Americans have on sending space craft. The Soviets send a craft nearly every chance they have, each with incremental improvements while the Americans send out craft once in a while with many changes. But despite the Cold War tensions, data was shared between scientists.

In the next two chapters, a discussion of the conditions on Venus are given in wonderful detail. Partially based on data returned by the Venera and Mariner space crafts as well as the Magellan probe, we get a picture of a geologically and chemically active planet. Venus's atmosphere is constantly cycling through a 'sulfur cycle' that involves both its clouds and the surface. The surface itself may be geologically active recently judging from the number of lava flows that can be seen. However, as the book points out, judging surface features only without being able to get soil samples makes it very difficult to compare Venus's features with those on Earth. Despite this, the speculations are thoughtful.

In the final chapter, the book considers a topic that many people may think strange: sending people to Venus to study it and possibly live on Venus (or above it in balloons). Some reasons given include doing a detailed comparison between Venus and Earth's features to learn more about how geology and the atmosphere shapes the planets, the possibility of finding life on Venus and even, in the very long run, of terra-forming Venus (possibly via water seeding using comets).

If you're looking for a book to find out more about Venus, this is a good book to read. The only major fault with the book is the lack of a bibliography for those interesting in finding out more about Venus. Otherwise, I can't think of a better book to curl up with when you want to find out about our sister planet.

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Venus Revealed by David Harry Grinspoon

Venus Revealed
by David Harry Grinspoon