VENUS

By: Nathalie Joseph, Danielle Reid, and Shundraus Williams

However the planets orbit lies within the Earth. The planets position can never be further than 47 degrees away from the Sun. Because,Venus lies in the Earth's orbit it can be seen in either the west in the evening and in the east in the morning. Because of its location Venus goes through a cycle of phases similar to the Moon's. Even when it's at its brightest and nearest a small telescope will still show that Venus is in actually a crescent.

The surface of Venus is covered by dense and highly reflecting clouds which don't show much features in light. These clouds consist of droplets of dilute sulphuric acid that is created by the sunlight action on carbon dioxide, sulphur compounds and water vapor present in the atmosphere. The atmosphere of Venus is mostly of carbon dioxide and the surface pressure is more than 90 times the surface pressure of the Earth.

Venus, the target of a large number of soviet and American probes, has an extremely high temperature and pressure which has destroyed many of the probes before returning data or after a relatively short period of operations. Neverthless, it proved possible to analyze the composition of chemical of some surface rocks and to return limited panoramic views of the surface terrain, and show rocky desert landscapes.

The first radar maps produce by space craft orbiting the planet showed that most of the surface consist of vast plains above. Which several large plateaux rise to heights of several kilometers. The two main highland areas are Ishtar Terra in northern hemisphere and Aprodite Terra in the equatorial region. The Maxwell Montes are the highest feature, rising to 11 kilometers above the mean level of the planetary surface.