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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.
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.
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.
Venus to scale among the Inner Solar System planetary-mass objects, arranged by the order of their orbits outward from the Sun (from left: Mercury, Venus, Earth, the Moon, Mars and Ceres) Venus is one of the four terrestrial planets in the Solar System, meaning that it is a rocky body like
Composition of the atmosphere of Venus. The chart on the right is an expanded view of the trace elements that all together do not even make up a tenth of a percent. The atmosphere of Venus is composed of 96.5% carbon dioxide, 3.5% nitrogen, and traces of other gases, most notably sulfur dioxide. [12]
During the mapping cycle 1 (left-looking) radar surface mapping on Venus (September 15, 1990 to May 15, 1991), around 70% of the Venusian surface was mapped by synthetic aperture radar. In cycle 2 (right-looking), 54.5% of the surface was mapped, mainly the south pole regions and gaps from cycle 1 during May 15, 1991 to January 14, 1992.
524522 Zoozve (/ ˈ z uː z v eɪ / ⓘ; provisional designation 2002 VE 68) is a sub-kilometer sized asteroid and temporary quasi-satellite of Venus. [5] Discovered in 2002, it was the first such object to be discovered around a major planet in the Solar System.
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 the crater floor resembles surrounding plain in morphology.