Beautiful and mysterious, peaceful and serene, the moon is the brightest object in the night sky. Jupiter and Saturn have more than sixty moons each. Neptune has thirteen moons. Even Mars has two moons. But the Earth, our planet, only has one moon, our nearest neighbor in space. Even though the moon is close to us when compared to other planets, it is still very, very far away. The moon is about 239 thousand miles or 384 thousand kilometers away. You would have to travel all the way around the Earth nine and a half times to go the same distance as the space between the Earth and the Moon. The moon is much smaller than the Earth. Ifthe Earth was hollow, about fifty moons could fit inside. Because it is so much smaller than the Earth, the moon's gravity is much weaker. This means that if you were to visit the moon, you would weigh much less than you do on earth, only about 1/6th of your current weight. That means that if a giraffe was on...
Venus - Named after the ancient Roman goddess of beauty, Venus is known for its exceptional brightness in the night sky. But behind this facade is a world of storms and infernos unlike anywhere else in the solar system. Venus, the second planet from the sun, is very similar to Earth from a distance.
But up close, it's a very different world. Venus is about the same size as Earth, just slightly smaller. It's structure is also nearly identical, with an iron core, a hot mantle, and a rocky crust. The crust of Venus, however, is dotted with thousands of volcanoes, including Maxwell Montes, a volcano almost as tall as Mount Everest. Venus also has a thick layered atmosphere.
It's full of clouds that rain (thunder cracking) sulfuric acid, and whip around the planet at speeds up to 224 miles per hour. Faster than some category five hurricanes. The atmosphere is so thick that it creates a surface pressure similar to what it would be about half a mile deepin the Earth's oceans.
This pressure is heavy enough that a human standing on Venus' surface, would be crushed. The atmosphere is madeof greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide. Which create an extreme case of global warming. They trap the sun's heat, causing surface temperatures to rise over 880 degrees Fahrenheit. Making Venus the hottest planet in the solar system. Venus is so in hospitable, neither humans nor space craft are able to survive the planet's surface.
But some scientists speculate that Venus wasn't always so unwelcoming. From roughly 2.9 billionto 715 million years go, global temperatures on Venus may have been just a few degrees cooler than Earth's are today. And scientists theorize that the surface may have contained shallow oceans that could have held enough water to support life. Today, life may still exist in Venus' atmosphere. About 30 miles up in Venus' clouds, where the temperature and surface pressure are similar to those onthe surface of Earth, scientists have observed strange dark streaks that appear to be absorbing ultraviolet radiation. A phenomenon that could be evidence of microbial life.
Life may struggle to survive in the atmosphere of Venus, but it is this unforgiving environment that's made Venus an icon of beauty. It reflects 70% of all the sunlight that reaches the planet, which is why Venus shines more brightly than any other planet orstar in the night sky. While more than 40 unmanned space craft have visited this infernal world, Venus, so illuminated inthe darkness of space, still has much to reveal.
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