The launch of Venus Express Probe has given scientists the useful data to study about the mystery facts of Venus. In short, it is an en route to investigate Venus’s hidden mysteries.
Venus Express probe was launched on November 9, 2005 in Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 0333 GMT in a Russian rocket called Soyuz-Fregat.
Venus Express entered Venus successfully on April 11, 2006 to revolve around the Venus orbit to explore the mysterious atmosphere and surface of Venus for as long as 486 days or more to detect the spectacular view of Venus as a whole. This scientifically detection undoubtedly had advance people’s knowledge on the wonder of the image of Venus.
Venus Express
Venus and Earth are planets that are the second and third farthest from the sun. Both have a considerably similar sizes, density, composition, and internal structure and thus are regarded as “siblings’ planets”. Nevertheless, some consequences of Venus have marked its difference from the Earth.
Venus rotates at an extremely slow pace, that is, its self-rotation can be as long as 243 days on the Earth. One day in Venus is equivalent to 116.8 days on the Earth, while its rotation around the sun takes 224.7 days on the Earth. The day in Venus is extremely long to pass by as compared to one day on the Earth. The Venus rotates in an opposite direction of the Earth’s rotation.
The distribution of the valleys in Venus is shown by the white arrows in the image. In particular, Venus has a very dense atmosphere that is mainly composed of carbon dioxide, followed by nitrogen and very little water vapor. In contrary, the major component of the Earth’s atmosphere is the mixture of nitrogen and oxygen along with much water vapor. The atmospheric greenhouse effect is particularly apparent and strong over Venus, and its surface temperature can attain as high as 477° C while the Earth’s average surface temperature is about 15° C. In general, the atmosphere of Venus is entirely enveloped by very dense and thick clouds. The clouds contain mainly sulfuric acid and hydrochloric acid. Due to its higher temperature beneath the clouds, the water droplet below the clouds can evaporate easily. Hence, the formation of acid rain is almost impossible to form over the surface of Venus. In comparison, the cloud formation distributed over the Earth relies upon the weather condition and different time scale of certain regions, and thus sometimes the formation of acid rain may obvious in some particular regions.
Venus was initially thought to have a similar environment condition as the Earth. However, the radar detection revealed to us that the surface of Venus is dry, less moisture, and exists in a hot desert with no living things surviving there. From 1992 to 1994, the radar of Magellan orbiter had successfully scanned 98% of the surface of Venus with a resolution of 120 to 300m. These scanned radar images confirmed some prominent features that characterized the real picture of Venus. Venus is volcanic structure in nature, with obvious landscapes of mountains, highlands, valleys, ridges and other tectonic geomorphology features. Therefore, Venus has a very different topography as compared to the Earth, the Mercury and the Moon. Excluding some highlands features in Venus, the elevation can have a difference of 2 to 3 km. Approximately 60% of its elevation has a difference not exceeding 500m, with only 5% of its topography higher than 2km. Basically, its topography can be divided into 8% highlands, 27% lowlands and the rest are not flat plateau. There are significant differences in the Northern Hemisphere and its Southern Hemisphere, with a characterization of the mountains and highlands to its northward while to its southward is mainly plain lands. The entire surface of Venus seems to be a domination of the volcanic landscape, and 90% of the newly formation of the magna which has the average age of less than 5 billion years. Volcanic lava flows is a common scene in Venus, but it has neither oceans nor rivers seen flowing over its surface.
The highest highland in Venus is located in its Northern Hemisphere, which occupies larger area than the Himalayan plateau. It has three mountains. The eastern mountain is the highest with its summit up to 12km, followed by the northern mountain with a height of 3km and a height of 2km to its westward mountain.
Within the highlands, there are many broad plateaus between its lowlands. The broadest plateau is as big as Mexico, with its average height less than 1.4km. It is believed that these lowlands may be volcanic lowland plateaus. There is a bending “riverbed” found onto the surface of the lowland. This “riverbed” is the lava flowing instead of the water flowing that we come across on the Earth.
There are about 1,100 volcanic structures found in Venus. Small round shield-shaped volcanoes have peak craters with lava flowing outside and they are well distributed in Venus. Their average diameter is 25km and some of them have the maximum height of 750m. A typical shield-shaped volcano has a base area of 400km, 1.5km in height and its lava flow extending to a wide area of several hundred kilometers.
A large and ring-shape volcano tectonic structure has 170 to 1,000km in diameter. There is an apparent fracture seen around the central area of its concentric ridges and troughs encompasses by a lava flow. There seems to be a large magma chamber above the collapsed dome of the volcano.
Even though the surface of Venus has extremely high temperature, pressure and coupling with other adverse conditions, the detectors were successfully landed to study its surface in a comprehensive manner. Here, the surface is mostly covered with pile of stones that have sizes of about 70 cm, less than 20 cm in thickness and most of its edge are quite sharp but it is very dark within the surface between the stones.
The rock shown in the image has a slightly brown in color. Its composition is mainly basalt.
This image was captured by VIRTIS (multi-band imaging spectrograph) with a distance of 190,000km from the surface of Venus on April 19, 2006. The black stripe structure shows that half of the absorption of solar radiation, and it is said that it has a property of a strong UV absorption. The absorption by the mysterious substance all over the surface of Venus still remains as an unknown mystery until now.
On April 12, 2006, Venus Express which has a distance of 20.645210, 000km captured this image with VIRTIS showing a dark whirlpool of Antarctica. The left image shows a day in the upper atmosphere while the right image is a night in the lower atmosphere capturing at 1.7 micron wavelength equivalents to the height of 55km. The darker area is a result of the thick cloud cover, while the brighter area is due to the thermal radiation beneath the thin cloud cover.
On April 19, 2006, VIRTIS has captured this image in a wavelength of 380nm. It shows the condition of a daytime in Venus. The cloud structure with a feature of many stripes may be due to the existence of dust and suspended particles.
