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The Venus symbol was also used in Western alchemy representing the element copper (like the symbol of Mercury is also the symbol of the element mercury), [284] [285] and since polished copper has been used for mirrors from antiquity the symbol for Venus has sometimes been called Venus mirror, representing the mirror of the goddess, although ...
However, the increasing number of moons that were being discovered in the 21st century caused the IAU to draw up a new scheme for the outer moons. At the IAU General Assembly in July 2004, [ 2 ] the WGPSN allowed satellites of Saturn to have names of giants and monsters in mythologies other than the Greco-Roman.
The adjectival forms of the names of astronomical bodies are not always easily predictable. Attested adjectival forms of the larger bodies are listed below, along with the two small Martian moons; in some cases they are accompanied by their demonymic equivalents, which denote hypothetical inhabitants of these bodies.
The surface of Venus is comparatively flat. When 93% of the topography was mapped by Pioneer Venus Orbiter, scientists found that the total distance from the lowest point to the highest point on the entire surface was about 13 kilometres (8.1 mi), about the same as the vertical distance between the Earth's ocean floor and the higher summits of the Himalayas.
In the early days, only a very limited number of features could be seen on other Solar System bodies other than the Moon. Craters on the Moon could be observed with even some of the earliest telescopes, and 19th-century telescopes could make out some features on Mars. Jupiter had its famous Great Red Spot, also visible through early telescopes.
Nineteen moons are large enough to be round, and two, Titan and Triton, have substantial atmospheres The number of moons discovered in each year until November 2019 Mercury , the smallest and innermost planet, has no moons, or at least none that can be detected to a diameter of 1.6 km (1.0 mi). [ 2 ]
Because its orbit takes it between the Earth and the Sun, Venus as seen from Earth exhibits visible phases in much the same manner as the Earth's Moon. Galileo Galilei observed the phases of Venus in December 1610, an observation which supported Copernicus's then-contentious heliocentric description of the Solar System.
Exceptions to this rule are valleys and craters on Mars and Venus; naming conventions for these features differ according to size. One feature classification, regio, was originally used on early maps of the Moon and Mercury (drawn from telescopic observations) to describe vague albedo features. It is now used to delineate a broad geographic region.