Welcome to our Solar / Planetary Walk which has been established in memorial to Alfred Piff, a longtime member of MBG and supporter of education for all. As you travel along the walk, you will experience the scale model of our solar neighborhood. Our walk is approximately .79 miles, and each planet is marked by Planetary Art Posts created by Nancy Thomas. Scanning the QR at each post will give access to information about each planet. Enjoy your walk!
Planet VENUS
Named for the Roman goddess of beauty and love, Venus can be
seen as a disk or a crescent from Earth. With a surface temperature of 806˚F, it is the hottest planet (hotter even than Mercury!) because of a runaway greenhouse effect due to its thick carbon dioxide atmosphere. It is completely covered by high sulfuric-acid clouds. Spacecraft have landed but only lasted an hour or so before their electronics failed. Surface features have been mapped by the Magellan spacecraft’s radar and named for famous females. Venus spins very slowly backwards compared to its orbit and to the other planets’ spins. Venus’ surface gravity is .91 g’s.
DIAMETER: 7,521 miles
DISTANCE FROM SUN: 0.72 AU = 484 million miles = 43 light minutes
ROTATION: 243 days
REVOLUTION AROUND ORBIT: 225 days
MOONS: none
Some Fun Facts - Did you know?
Because it orbits between us and the Sun, Venus often appears as a bright ‘star’ after sunset or before sunrise. With a small telescope, you can sometimes see Venus as a crescent shape.
Venus’s swirling cloud tops and dense atmosphere were photographed by the Pioneer Venus Orbiter in 1979.
Since we cannot see through Venus’s thick, steamy atmosphere, this mercador projection of the planet’s surface was created from radar imaging. Blues represents low ground, yellows and reds are high terrain.
