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Venus lacks an internal dynamo, and its weakly induced magnetosphere is caused by atmospheric interactions with the solar wind. Internal heat escapes through active volcanism, [21] [22] resulting in resurfacing instead of plate tectonics. Venus is one of two planets in the Solar System, the other being Mercury, that have no moons. [23]
Mercury is one of four terrestrial planets in the Solar System, which means it is a rocky body like Earth. It is the smallest planet in the Solar System, with an equatorial radius of 2,439.7 kilometres (1,516.0 mi). [4] Mercury is also smaller—albeit more massive—than the largest natural satellites in the Solar System, Ganymede and Titan.
In 1677, Edmond Halley observed a transit of Mercury across the Sun, leading him to realize that observations of the solar parallax of a planet (more ideally using the transit of Venus) could be used to trigonometrically determine the distances between Earth, Venus, and the Sun. [287] Halley's friend Isaac Newton, in his magisterial Principia ...
Venus (and also Mercury) is not visible from Earth when it is full, since at that time it is at superior conjunction, rising and setting concomitantly with the Sun and hence lost in the Sun's glare. Venus is brightest when approximately 25% of its disk is illuminated; this typically occurs 37 days both before (in the evening sky) and after (in ...
A terrestrial planet, tellurian planet, telluric planet, or rocky planet, is a planet that is composed primarily of silicate, rocks or metals.Within the Solar System, the terrestrial planets accepted by the IAU are the inner planets closest to the Sun: Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.
On August 23, 2023, Venus retrograde and Mercury retrograde will join forces for a wild and crazy finale to summer. As you look at your calendar to lock in your last-minute summer plans, there are ...
"Inferior planet" refers to Mercury and Venus, which are closer to the Sun than Earth is. "Superior planet" refers to Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune (the latter two added later), which are further from the Sun than Earth is. The terms are sometimes used more generally; for example, Earth is an inferior planet relative to Mars.
Mercury and Venus, the closest planets to the Sun, similarly exhibit very slow rotation: Mercury is tidally locked into a 3:2 spin–orbit resonance (rotating three times for every two revolutions around the Sun), [84] and Venus's rotation may be in equilibrium between tidal forces slowing it down and atmospheric tides created by solar heating ...