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Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is a terrestrial planet and is the closest in mass and size to its orbital neighbour Earth. Venus has by far the densest atmosphere of the terrestrial planets, composed mostly of carbon dioxide with a thick, global sulfuric acid cloud cover.
In fact, through a telescope Venus at greatest elongation appears less than half full due to Schröter's effect first noticed in 1793 and shown in 1996 as due to its thick atmosphere. [15] [16] On rare occasions, Venus can actually be seen in both the morning (before sunrise) and evening (after sunset) on the same day.
The orbit of Venus is 224.7 Earth days (7.4 avg. Earth months [30.4 days]). The phases of Venus result from the planet's orbit around the Sun inside the Earth's orbit giving the telescopic observer a sequence of progressive lighting similar in appearance to the Moon's phases. It presents a full image when it is on the opposite side of the Sun.
The greatest elongation of a given inferior planet occurs when this planet's position, in its orbital path around the Sun, is at tangent to the observer on Earth. Since an inferior planet is well within the area of Earth's orbit around the Sun, observation of its elongation should not pose that much a challenge (compared to deep-sky objects, for example).
Venus on 26 October 2015 at her greatest western elongation in the constellation Leo close to Jupiter and Mars. Magnitudes: Venus: -4,5 mag, Jupiter: -1,8 mag, Mars: +1,8 mag, Leo: +4,1 mag. In astrology, an aspect is an angle a planet makes to another planet or point of astrological interest.
On December 24, 1604 Mercury stood in conjunction with Kepler's Supernova, whereby it was 1.8 degrees south of it. As the elongation of this event to the sun was 15 degree, it was in principle observable. On January 20th, 1605 Venus passed Kepler's Supernova 29 arc minutes northwards at an elongation of 43.1 degrees to the sun.
Missions to Venus constitute part of the exploration of Venus. The Soviet Union , followed by the United States , have soft landed probes on the surface. Venera 7 was the first lander overall and first for the Soviet Union, touching down on 15 December 1970.
The evolution of the apparent diameter and phases of Venus. A planetary phase is a certain portion of a planet's area that reflects sunlight as viewed from a given vantage point, as well as the period of time during which it occurs. The phase is determined by the phase angle, which is the angle between the planet, the Sun and the Earth.