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It has a diameter of 12,103.6 km (7,520.8 mi)—only 638.4 km (396.7 mi) less than Earth's—and its mass is 81.5% of Earth's, making it the third-smallest planet in the Solar System. Conditions on the surface of Venus differ radically from those on Earth because its dense atmosphere is 96.5% carbon dioxide, causing an intense greenhouse effect ...
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.
[1] [2] The low eccentricity and comparatively small size of its orbit give Venus the least range in distance between perihelion and aphelion of the planets: 1.46 million km. The planet orbits the Sun once every 225 days [3] and travels 4.54 au (679,000,000 km; 422,000,000 mi) in doing so, [4] giving an average orbital speed of 35 km/s (78,000 ...
Mead crater is the largest impact crater on Venus, with a diameter of 280 km (174 miles). [1] The crater has an inner and an outer ring and a small ejecta blanket surrounding the outer ring. Mead crater is relatively shallow (likely due to viscous relaxation [ 2 ] and infilling) and crater floor looks very similar in morphology to the ...
The surface of Venus is dominated by geologic features that include volcanoes, large impact craters, and aeolian erosion and sedimentation landforms. Venus has a topography reflecting its single, strong crustal plate, with a unimodal elevation distribution (over 90% of the surface lies within an elevation of -1.0 and 2.5 km) [1] that preserves geologic structures for long periods of time.
In part, this is because Venus's dense atmosphere burns up smaller meteorites before they hit the surface. The Venera and Magellan data agree: there are very few impact craters with a diameter less than 30 kilometres (19 mi), and data from Magellan show an absence of any craters less than 2 kilometres (1 mi) in diameter. However, there are also ...
Venus reaches its greatest magnitude of about −4.5 when it is an intermediate crescent shape at the point in its orbit, when it is 68 million km away from the Earth, at which point the illuminated part of its disk reaches its greatest angular area as seen from the Earth (a combination of its closeness and the fact that it is 28% illuminated). [2]
It is sometimes called Earth's "sister planet" due to their similar size, gravity, and bulk composition (Venus is both the closest planet to Earth and the planet closest in size to Earth). The surface of Venus is covered by a dense atmosphere and presents clear evidence of former violent volcanic activity.