Venus

Venus is one of the brightest objects in the night sky. If you know where to look, you can even see it during the day. This is because the cloud cover on Venus that reflect about 77% of incoming sunlight back into space. This cloud cover also frustrates any attempt to view surface features with optical telescopes.

By means of spacecraft, we are starting to uncover the mysteries of this alien world. Spacecraft have plunged throught the clouds and atmosphere of Venus to its forbidding surface. They found Venus to be a helish place. Althought the air is quite clear and visibility good below the cloud cover, the temperature was found to be 477ºC and the atmosphere contains mostly carbon dioxide. Venus has been called the twin sister of earth but it is actually far from that.

The Russian spacecraft that landed on Venus (Venera 13 and Venera 14) stopped working within an hour because of the extreme heat and pressure. The pressure on Venus is equal to the pressure encountered at a depth of 1 km in the earth's oceans.

This photo of the surface of Venus was taken by Venera 13 before it stopped functioning. Note the slabs of rock and dark soil.