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Definition: Venus from The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide

Venus, the planet nearest to Earth, photographed from the Mariner 10 space probe in 1974. When the Sun was cooler Venus may have had oceans and life may have appeared, but as the Sun grew hotter the planet's surface became scorched and covered by dense clouds of carbon dioxide.

(Image © NASA)

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Venus (astronomy)

Venus

From Atlas of the Universe
Venus, the second planet in order of distance from the Sun, is as different from Mercury as it could possibly be. It is far brighter than any other star or planet, and can cast strong shadows; very keen-sighted people can see the phase with the naked eye during the crescent stage, and binoculars show it easily. Yet telescopically Venus is a disappointment. Little can be seen, and generally the disk appears blank. We are looking not at a solid surface, but at the top of a layer of cloud which never clears. Before the Space Age, we knew very little about Venus as a world. We knew the size and mass; Venus is only very slightly inferior to the Earth, so that the two are near-twins. The orbital period is 224.7 days, and the path round the Sun is almost circular. Estimates of the rotation period ranged from less than 24 hours up to many months, but the favored value was about a month. The vague shadings sometimes visible on the disk were much too indefinite to give any reliable results. …
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Full text Article Venus

From Astronomy Encyclopedia
Venera The Russian Venera 13 lander survived the...
Second planet in the Solar System from the Sun and, apart from the Sun and the Moon, the brightest object in the sky. Venus is one of the TERRESTRIAL PLANETS , similar in nature to the Earth but slightly smaller. Like the Earth it has a substantial atmosphere. Since its orbit lies inside that of the…
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A relatively young volcanic vent...
In 1610 Galileo Galilei discovered that Venus exhibited a full set of phases, proving that Ptolemy's structure of the solar system was incorrect. As a result, Galileo settled on the Copernican heliocentric system. Johannes Kepler predicted in his Rudolphine Tables of 1627 that there would be a…
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Full text Article VENUS

From Gaither's Dictionary of Scientific Quotations
Irish astronomer The lover of nature turns to admire the sunset, as every lover of nature will. In the golden glory of the west a beauteous gem is seen to glitter; it is the evening star – the planet Venus…. All the heavenly host – even Sirius and Jupiter – must pale before the splendid lustre of…
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Full text Article Venus

From Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
The Roman goddess of beauty and sensual love, identified with aphrodite , in some accounts said to have sprung from the foam of the sea, in others to have been the daughter of jupiter and dione , a nymph . vulcan was her husband, but she had amours with mars and many other gods and demigods. By…
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Full text Article Venus

From Science Encyclopedia: Encyclopedia of Space and Astronomy
Venus is the second-closest planet to the Sun. It...
Also known as: Evening Star; Morning Star Venus is the second planet from the Sun. Because the planet appears to observers on Earth as either an evening or a morning star, it is often called the Evening Star or the Morning Star. Venus is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty. Among the…
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Full text Article Venus

From The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization
The debate over the original nature of this goddess, who does not belong to Rome's oldest pantheon but is attested fairly early at Lavinium, has been partly resolved (Schilling, La Religion romaine de Vénus (1954; repr. 1982)). It is now accepted that the neuter † venus , ‘charm’, cannot be…
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Full text Article Venus

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
Venus, view of the northern hemisphere based on...
Second major planet from the Sun. Named for the Roman goddess, Venus is, after the Moon , the most brilliant natural object in the night sky. Venus comes closer to Earth—about 26 million mi (42 million km)—than any other planet. Its orbit around the Sun is nearly circular at a distance of about 67…
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Full text Article Venus

From The Chambers Dictionary
the goddess of love, orig of spring, patron of flower-gardens, later identified with the Greek Aphrodite ( Roman myth ); the most brilliant of the planets, second in order from the sun; copper ( alchemy ); an alluring grace, beauty ( obs ); venery ( obs ); (also without cap ) a mollusc of a genus ( …
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Full text Article Venus

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
Second planet from the Sun. It can approach Earth to within 38 million km/24 million mi, closer than any other planet. Its mass is 0.82 that of Earth. Venus rotates on its axis more slowly than any other planet, from east to west, the opposite direction to the other planets (except Uranus and the…
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Full text Article Venus

From Encyclopedia of Ancient Rome
Roman goddess of love; an old deity to the Italians and quite unimportant in ROME until the influence of the Greeks was felt. From that point, Venus took on the characteristics of Aphrodite, her Greek counterpart, and in that form she came to Rome, via the PUNIC WAR with CARTHAGE. Romans were…
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