NATS 1570 Lecture 9: Lecture 9
9 Mar 2017
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Venus, unlikely mercury has been visited by a number of probes. Most recently magellan spent years in orbit in the 1990"s and gave us detailed radio maps. Currently esa" venus express is in orbit. Venus is the second planet from the sun. It is at a distance of 0. 72 a. u. (1 a. u. is the average earth sun distance of 149,000,000 km) . Since venus is closer, it will have a shorter orbital period - 226 days, and it receives more sunlight so it is hotter. Venus in size and structure is very similar to earth. It has a similar diameter and is about. Venus however differs in a number of ways. It rotates on its axis retrograde this means the sun would rise in the west on venus. It also rotates very slowly - once every 243 days. This rotation is very unusual, and may result from some sort of extreme collision or other event in venus" past.
