After its 5 month, 400 million-kilometre journey inside our solar system (since 11-9-06), the Venus Express spacecraft will arrive in Venus orbit on April 11, 2006. What would the surface look like?
199433
We know what the surface of venus looks like, the Magellan spacecraft already mapped it (altitude wise), and the Soviets landed a couple of probes on the surface a long time ago.\n\nThe new craft will not tell us what the surface looks like, you can't get any visible light info from the surface due to the thick clouds.\n\nThe ESA's stated scientific objectives for the missions are:\n    * What is the mechanism and what is the driving force of the super-rotation of the atmosphere?\n    * What are the basic processes in the general circulation of the atmosphere?\n    * What is the composition and chemistry of the lower atmosphere and the clouds?\n    * What is the past and present water balance in the atmosphere?\n    * What is the role of the radiative balance and greenhouse effect in the past present and future evolution of the planet?\n    * Is there currently volcanic and/or tectonic activity on the planet?
350271
A day on Venus is longer than a year because it spins the other way.\nSaturn has rings, and so does Jupiter and other giants!\nMars sometime seems to be going backward in the sky!\nUranus spins on its side (the same pole always points to the Sun)\nMercuray and Venus have no moon, and Jupiter and Saturn have new ones being discovered all the time.\nPluto is no longer a planet because it's too small and its orbit is too oval.
363070
The surface temperature on Venus is 800 degrees Fahrenheit.  As a point of comparison, paper catches fire at 451 degrees Fahrenheit.  The atmospheric pressure is immense.  The atmosphere is sulfur and methane and other poisons.  It's a hard sun-baked kiln oven landscape.   Not that you could ever see the sun, the atmosphere is too thick.  The night side is practically as hot as the day side because the superheated air covers the entire planet.   Sorry, I wish Venus was the lush tropical garden that they thought it was 100 years ago.  But a few unmanned probes have landed there and sent back pictures before they melted into a little puddle.  Looks just like the inside of an oven.
362668
Venus 243 earth days make one Venus day
257310
Hmmm...silicates would be expected because regardless of its high iron content, (avg density of 5.4 g/cm^3!) the light stuff would float to the surface when Mercury was molten.  I bet we have spectroscopic measurements that are consistent with silicates too.\n\nThe Messenger space craft will actually become a satellite of Mercury  in 5 years. We will learn a lot when it gets there. http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/faq/faq_mission.html#2
536221
Mars \nThe planet that is fourth outward from the Sun. Mars has a mean heliocentric distance (semimajor axis) of 1.524 astronomical units, equivalent to 141.6 × 106 mi (227.9 × 106 km). Its orbital eccentricity of 0.093, one of the largest of the major planets, causes the distance between Mars and the Sun to vary from 128 × 106 mi (207 × 106 km) at perihelion to 155 × 106 mi (249 × 106 km) at aphelion. The mean diameter of Mars is 4212 mi (6780 km), or about 53% that of the Earth. The planet has a mass of 7.08 × 1020 tons (6.42 × 1023 kg), about 11% of Earth's. The sidereal rotation period is 24h 37m 22.7s, corresponding to a mean solar day of 24h 39m 35.2s.\n\nMars appears to the unaided eye as a bright, slightly reddish star. Having a mean (synodic) period between oppositions of 780 days, Mars is in conjunction with the Sun every other year. Viewed through a telescope, Mars usually appears as a bright reddish disk marked by complex, semipermanent dark regions and variable white polar caps.\n\nInterior\n\nAccurate measurements of the planet's gravitational field made by orbiting spacecraft have shown that Mars has a dense core and thus is differentiated into a core, mantle, and crust. The crust, composed of silicate rocks, enriched in silicon and aluminum and deficient in magnesium, is believed to be about 30 mi (50 km) thick. Over geologic time, partial melting of the crust or upper mantle has caused lower-density materials to float to the surface, creating the observed lava plains and volcanic structures.\n\nAt present Mars does not have a global magnetic field of appreciable strength. However, early in its history Mars must have had a more substantial magnetic field, because its near-surface rocks exhibit strong remanent magnetism. See also Rock magnetism.\n\nGeology\n\nThe Martian surface has been modified extensively by the processes of impact cratering, volcanism, faulting, and fluvial erosion. The terrain in the southern hemisphere is very heavily cratered and thus quite old, having formed some 3.8 × 109 years ago. Much of it stands 1–2 mi (1–4 km) higher than the planet's mean radius. By contrast, the northern hemisphere is dominated by vast, lava-covered plains with relatively few impact craters and an average elevation of about 3 mi (5 km) below the mean radius.\n\nThe Tharsis rise, or bulge, is an uplifted portion of the surface that stands several kilometers above the mean elevation of the planet. Most of Mars's tectonic features are associated with Tharsis, which affects approximately one-quarter of the entire surface.\n\nThe Martian surface exhibits several enormous shield volcanoes. The largest and perhaps the youngest is Olympus Mons, which is nearly 370 mi (600 km) across at its base and stands approximately 16 mi (26 km) above the surrounding terrain. Three other large shield volcanoes, Ascraeus Mons, Pavonis Mons, and Arsia Mons, lie along the nearby Tharsis rise. In shape and structure the Martian shield volcanoes bear a strong resemblance to their Hawaiian counterparts. At the summit of each shield is a complex of calderas, collapsed craterlike features that were once vents for lava.\n\nPerhaps the most spectacular features on the Martian surface are the huge canyons located primarily in the equatorial regions. Valles Marineris, actually a system of canyons, extends for over 3000 mi (5000 km) along the equatorial belt. In places, the canyon complex is as much as 300 mi (500 km) wide and drops to more than 4 mi (6 km) below the surrounding surface. Dwarfing the Earth's Grand Canyon, Valles Marineris is comparable in size to the great East African Rift Valley. In general, the walls of the canyon are precipitous, have well-defined edges, and show evidence of slumping and landslide activity (Fig. 1).\n\n\nAn image from the Mars Global Surveyor resolves features as small as 20 ft (6 m) in a 10-km-wide portion of Coprates Chasma, which is located in the middle of Mars's vast
623021
You need to do a lot of studying to learn about many things.  Venus is different colors depending on where it is and we are.  We do not get anything from the planet.  No person has been there yet.  It is so hot there we would melt.
271969
It's the biggest planet in our solar system.1300 times larger than earth.It has a storm that has been raging for over 300 years in it's atmosphere called the Great Red Spot.It's also the storm that torn Comet Shoemaker Levy 9 to pieces.One of it's crust layers consists of liquid metallic hydrogen.
37884
I believe all the planets in our solar system formed about the same time, around 5 and a half billion years ago or so. I believe there is a younger solar system than ours around the star called Vega. It is in our galaxy and I believe it is around 26 light years away, the speed of light being 186,000 miles a second. The distance is the number of miles light would travel in 26 years, if that makes any sense. Vega is a blue star, a very young star. Our sun is a G star, a bit older. The stars are categorized O,B,A,F,G,K,M. The way to remember is the phrase "Oh, be a fine girl kiss me" with each letter corresponding to star categories. Vega is an O star, the youngest. I hope that isn't too complicated, I know your six.\n\nWhat you might do is get some colored balls to represent each of the star categories, some paint (in case the ball is the wrong color), and some cardboard, sticks, and glue. The M star is a red supergiant so a red dodge ball, the K is a red giant but not supergiant, so a red delicious apple, the O is blue-white, the G is golden, yellow-orange like our sun. The B, A, and F stars I do not know much about.
512059
A NASA site states:\n"The heliopause has never been reached by any spacecraft; the Voyagers may be the first to pass through this region, which is thought to exist somewhere from 8 to 14 billion miles from the Sun. Sometime in the next 5 years, the two spacecraft should cross an area known as the termination shock. This is where the million-mile-per-hour solar winds slows to about 250,000 miles per hour—the first indication that the wind is nearing the heliopause. The Voyagers should cross the heliopause 10 to 20 years after reaching the termination shock."\n\nAlso check APOD 2002 June 24  (APOD = Astronomy Picture Of the Day).  Their best guess is 110 AU (Astronomical Units; 1 AU is the average Sun-Earth distance), in the direction of the apex -- this would make it the shortest distance.\n\nYou ask for average distance.  Using their drawing (if it is to scale) the trailing end of the heliopause appears 7 times further than the front end.  Thus the average is 4 times  (seven plus one, the sum divided by two): 440 AU.\n\nAs the previous person said:  this is a guess.  It is based on an educated guess for the front end (NASA), and a relatively well thought out drawing that, maybe, could represent the quasi-ellipsoidal form of the heliopause surface.\n\nA mile is 1.6 km (8 billion miles is 12.8 x 10^9 km)
417404
to all people who have answered before me, please read.\n\nMecury may transit the sun, but it is still invisible to the naked eye.  If you reflet the sun's image through a hole in a pirce of paper, you still won't see it.  Mercury is tiny and only special wavelength photographs will show a tiny speck.  With the sun's brightness, the naked eye cannot see it.\n\nVenus transits the sun very rarely if ever.  the last transit was last year.  It probably won't transit the sun for a very lnog time.\n\nIf you saw something, it might have been something closer to home... like a sattilite orbiting earth or a helicopter..
320382
By 2030/2050 AD\nI have plots in Mars and Venus.\n\nWana buy a plot?
382421
Mariner 10 was the seventh successful launch in the Mariner spacecraft series, and the first to use the gravitational pull of one planet (Venus) to reach another (Mercury). Instruments on board the spacecraft were designed to measure the atmospheric, surface, and physical characteristics of Mercury and Venus. Experiments included television photography, magnetic field, plasma, infrared radiometry, ultraviolet spectroscopy, and radio science detectors. An experimental X-band, high-frequency transmitter was flown for the first time on the spacecraft.\n\nOn November 3, 1973, Mariner 10 was placed in a parking orbit after launch for approximately 25 minutes, then placed in orbit around the Sun en route to Venus. The orbit direction around the Sun was opposite to that of the Earth. Mariner 10 flew past Venus on February 5, 1974, at a distance of 4,200 kilometers (2,610 miles). More than 4,000 photos of Venus revealed a nearly round planet enveloped in smooth cloud layers. Venus exhibited a slow rotational period of 243 days and had only 0.05 percent of Earth's magnetic field. The planet's atmosphere was composed mostly of carbon dioxide.\n\nAfter the Venus flyby, Mariner's trajectory was bent in toward the Sun to accelerate and fling it out of Venus's gravitational field and onward to Mercury. Mariner 10 reached Mercury on March 29, 1974, passing over the planet at 705 kilometers (438 miles) above the surface. A second encounter with Mercury occurred on September 21, 1974, at an altitude of about 47,000 kilometers (29,200 miles). The sunlit side of the planet and the south polar region were photographed. A third and last Mercury encounter, at an altitude of 327 kilometers (203 miles), occurred on March 16, 1975. About 300 additional photographs were obtained along with magnetic field measurements. Photographs of the planet reveal an intensely cratered, Moon-like surface and a faint atmosphere of mostly helium, resulting from solar wind bombardment. Engineering tests were continued until March 24, 1975, when the supply of attitude-control gas was depleted and the mission was terminated.
511686
ahhh more swamp gas refracting off venus with a strange cloud formation, is what they'll have you believe.\nfollow it up at http://www.ufoevidence.org/ \nGood luck
194014
Possibly, but i believe venus is a better candidate.  The higher gravity of venus (very earthlike) would allow it to sustain an atmosphere like ours if we can solve 2 other problems...more solar radiation, and a retrograde day that is months long.\n\nThe L.O.V.E. project (Life On Venus Enhancement) I made this up when i was a kid:  solution 1 - put lightweight, but very large reflectors into orbit around venus, on the day side they will block light in a 24 hour pattern, on the night side they will provide sunlight in the same pattern.\n\nsolution 2 - release into orbit around venus a cloud of particles to reduce the solar radiation and also use the reflectors/shades described above.\n\nAs the temperatures approach earthlike conditions, introduce water (capture a comet probably, or change it's orbit subtly to get it to venus.)\n\nIt's possible there is substantial water on venus tied up in some chemical situation or another, we don't know enough about it.\n\nand btw, for the other answers claiming mars is too hot, um, no?
418357
This is a misunderstanding.  If you plot Venus's position relative to the Earth, instead of the Sun, it performs a series of loops.  There are five loops in an eight year peiod, and they repeat very closely every eight years, the result being that it is fairly easy to predict when and where Venus will be visible over lengthy time periods.\nHowever, Venus does NOT look like a pentagram or form one with other objects.
383742
We do not have a real explanation...\nDuring the stage of formation of the solar system, the gases and dust accumulated to form one big blog, the sun, and several other blogs that became planets.  This cloud of dust was animated with a small rotation, and each blog rotated with slight differences.  The Sun formed, and the rest of the dust became planets, still with some remaining rotation.  At that time, many small blogs were floating around and hitting each other.  It is likely that, at that stage, Venus (or what would become Venus) was hit by another rock, changed rotation, and still running that way.\nSo, no, Venus is not "special".  It is just another rock that was formed at the time...