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Select > Who • What • When • Where • Which |
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Venus : the Second Planet > 
Venus is the second planet from the Sun and the sixth largest. On June 8 2004, Venus will pass directly between the Earth and the Sun, appearing as a large black dot travelling across the Sun's disk. This event is known as a "transit of Venus" and is very rare: the last one was in 1882, the next one is in 2012 but after than you'll have to wait until 2117. While no longer of great scientific importance as it was in the past, this event will be the impetus for a major journey for many amateur astronomers.
Venus (Greek: Aphrodite; Babylonian: Ishtar) is the goddess of love and beauty. The planet is so named probably because it is the brightest of the planets known to the ancients. (With a few exceptions, the surface features on Venus are named for female figures.)
Venus has been known since prehistoric times. It is the brightest object in the sky except for the Sun and the Moon. Like Mercury, it was popularly thought to be two separate bodies: Eosphorus as the morning star and Hesperus as the evening star, but the Greek astronomers knew better.
Since Venus is an inferior planet, it shows phases when viewed with a telescope from the perspective of Earth. Galileo's observation of this phenomenon was important evidence in favor of Copernicus's heliocentric theory of the solar system.
The first spacecraft to visit Venus was Mariner 2 in 1962. It was subsequently visited by many others (more than 20 in all so far), including Pioneer Venus and the Soviet Venera 7 the first spacecraft to land on another planet, and Venera 9 which returned the first photographs of the surface. Most recently, the orbiting US spacecraft Magellan produced detailed maps of Venus' surface using radar.
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More on this Website >
• http://www.nineplanets.org/venus.html
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Univers
The Universe today is very different from the Universe of the past and of the future. However, we can discover much about the past and the future from what we can current... |
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Saturn, The Sixth Planet
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest. In Roman mythology, Saturn is the god of agriculture. The associated Greek god, Cronus, was the son of... |
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Earth
The continents are the great land masses of the earth. There are seven continent on Earth now: Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South Ameri... |
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Aphrodite : Venus de Milo
As the Greek goddess of love and beauty, Aphrodite holds great power over both mortals and immortals. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that she is featured in num... |
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Copernicus, Earth moves around the Sun
Nicolaus Copernicus was an astronomer who provided the first modern formulation of a heliocentric (sun-centered) theory of the solar system in his epochal book, De revolu... |
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Galileo Timeline
A detailed chronology of Galileo's life. Galileo invented many mechanical devices other than the pump, such as the hydrostatic balance. But perhaps his most famous invent... |
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Nasa Timeline of Planetary Exploration
This chronology gives a list of a known (successful and unsuccessful) lunar and planetary missions including a few historical missions which were instrumental in the deve... |
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