New Day, New Planet: Venus Research

VENUS Research

http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/ask/45-What-is-the-surface-of-Venus-like-

Cool Cosmos is an IPAC website. Based on Government Sponsored Research. Support of NASA and JPL

The surface of Venus is a very hot and dry place. Most of the surface is made up of gently rolling plains. Venus has several large lowlands and two large highland areas which are about the size of Australia and South America. Venus has several mountains and volcanoes and much of its surface is covered with old lava flows. The highest mountain on Venus is Maxwell Montes. It is more than 7 miles high and is higher than Mt. Everest. Venus does not have many craters because most meteors burn up in its thick atmosphere, and many of the meteor craters which did exist have been covered by lava flows. The atmosphere of Venus is too thick for us to see its surface, however, radar can pass through the thick atmosphere of Venus, allowing us to find out what the surface is like.

http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/venus/surface.html

Overview of Surface

The surface of Venus is rather smooth in many places, though not nearly as smooth as originally expected . However, we find evidence for many of the same geological features found on Earth: canyons, volcanoes, lava flows, rift valleys, mountains, craters, and plains. There is substantial evidence for local tectonic activity but the surface appears to be a single crustal plate, with little evidence for large-scale horizontal motion of crustal plates as found on the Earth. Why the two planets differ in this aspect of their geology even though we believe them to have similar interiors is not well understood. The usual explanation is that Venus is a little behind the Earth in geological timescale, and its tectonic activity is just getting started.

Much of the surface of Venus appears to be rather young. The global data set from radar imaging reveals a number of craters consistent with an average Venus surface age of 300 million to 500 million years.

There are two "continents", which are large regions several kilometers above the average elevation. These are called Istar Terra and Aphrodite Terra. They can be seen in the preceding animation as the large green, yellow, and red regions indicating higher elevation near the equator (Aphrodite Terra) and near the top (Ishtar Terra).

Examples of Surface Features

We now survey a few of the prominent types of surface features that have been discovered on Venus.

Mountains

Venus has high mountains, many of which appear to be volcanic in origin. The bright region near the center in the polar hemispheric view (a) above is Maxwell Montes,the highest mountain range on Venus; it reaches an elevation of 11 km above average elevation (2 km more than the elevation of Mount Everest above sea level on Earth).

Volcanos and Lava Flows

There is strong evidence that volcanoes have erupted on Venus in the geologically recent past, and strong indirect evidence from observations like changing chemical composition of the atmosphere and the detection of lightning in certain regions that volcanoes are presently active on Venus, though we do not yet have direct proof. (Here is a map of volcanic structures on Venus.) One piece of evidence for recent volcanic activity is the presence in many regions of features that look like relatively new lava flows. The two images shown below illustrates a volcano about 3 miles in diameter near Paragon Chasma (left) and an image of apparent recent lava flows in the Sif Mons region.

In all of these radar images you should bear in mind that bright spots correspond to regions that reflect more radar waves than other regions. Thus, if you could actually see these regions with your eyes the patterns of brightness and darkness would probably not be the same as in these images. However, the basic features would still be the same.

Rift Valleys

There are rift valleys as large as the East African Rift (the largest on Earth). The image shown below illustrates a rift valley in the West Eistla Region, near Gula Mons and Sif Mons.The perspective in cases like this is synthesized from radar data taken from different positions in orbit. 

The East African Rift on Earth is a consequence of tectonic motion between the African and Eurasian plates (the Dead Sea in Israel is also a consequence of this same plate motion). Large rift valleys on Venus appear to be a consequence of more local tectonic activity, since the surface of Venus still appears to be a single plate.

Meteor Craters

The surface of Venus has been smoothed by recent lava flows and by interaction with the corrosive atmosphere. However, there are various examples of meteor craters. The following images show a field of craters (left) and the largest crater found (right).

Several lines of evidence point to ongoing volcanic activity on Venus. During the Soviet Venera program, the Venera 11 and Venera 12 probes detected a constant stream of lightning, and Venera 12 recorded a powerful clap of thunder soon after it landed. The European Space Agency's Venus Express recorded abundant lightning in the high atmosphere. While rainfall drives thunderstorms on Earth, there is no rainfall on the surface of Venus (though sulfuric acid rain falls in the upper atmosphere, then evaporates around 25 km above the surface). One possibility is that ash from a volcanic eruption was generating the lightning. Another piece of evidence comes from measurements of sulfur dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere, which dropped by a factor of 10 between 1978 and 1986. This may imply the levels had earlier been boosted by a large volcanic eruption.

Wiki and Drifting on Alien Winds
CULTURE
Venus is the only planet with a female name.  The astronomical symbol is the same symbol used in biology for the female sex; a circle with a cross below it. Greeks named the planet after Aphrodite, goddess of beauty, love, grace and sexual exhilaration.
Mayan civilization created their calendar based on the movements of Venus. Venus is also known as the morning star or twilight star, since it’s the brightest at dawn and dusk. The Pawnee, a North American native tribe, until as late as 1838, practiced a morning star ritual in which a girl was sacrificed to the morning star
Venus is important in many Australian aboriginal cultures, such as that of the Yolngu people in Northern Australia. The Yolngu gather after sunset to await the rising of Venus, which they call Barnumbirr. As she approaches, in the early hours before dawn, she draws behind her a rope of light attached to the Earth, and along this rope, with the aid of a richly decorated "Morning Star Pole", the people are able to communicate with their dead loved ones, showing that they still love and remember them. Barnumbirr is also an important creator-spirit in the Dreaming, and "sang" much of the country into life.
Landis, Geoffrey A. (2003). "Colonization of Venus". AIP Conference Proceedings 654 (1). pp. 1193–1198. doi:10.1063/1.1541418.

Colonization

Owing to its extremely hostile conditions, a surface colony on Venus is out of the question with current technology. The atmospheric pressure and temperature approximately fifty kilometres above the surface are similar to those at the Earth's surface and Earth air (nitrogen and oxygen) would be a lifting gas in the Venusian atmosphere of mostly carbon dioxide. This has led to proposals for "floating cities" in the Venusian atmosphere. Aerostats (lighter-than-air balloons) could be used for initial exploration and ultimately for permanent settlements. Among the many engineering challenges are the dangerous amounts of sulfuric acid at these heights


Drifting on Alien Winds by Michael Carroll

Average surface temperatures reach a searing 864F. At night, the rocks are so hot that the landscape glows a dull red. Planet is dry. Sulfuric acid rains from an eternally overcast and gloomy sky the rain never reaches the surface, it evaporates before it could. Earth’s twin sister, and is the closest planet to us. Venus has volcanoes that are powered by the planet’s internal heat. Venus’s atmosphere is blanketing by a dense canopy of almost pure carbon dioxide that traps heat from the sun in self-reinforcing greenhouse cycle.
The atmosphere is covered in the thick layers sof clouds. The base of the lowest cloud deck is 30 miles above the surface, the air is clear. The clear air pours sulfuric acid rain that never makes the ground. High temperatures and updrafts assure the rainfall on Venus becomes virga, rain that evaporates before it makes landfall.
Rather than familiar billowing walls of opaque white, the clouds of Venus are more like thin fog or haze stretching from one horizon to the other. We can’t see surface of Venus from the outside is not because clouds are dense, but because there is so much of them. Winds carry clouds around the globe every 4 days known as “superrotation”. Winds are at 100km/h where is pressure is 16 times more than the surface of the Earth.
In 1995 bizarre readings made it look like it was snowing metal. The radar had bright reflections, and dude to Venus’s drastic pressures specific metals may exists as a vapor. A haze of metallic vapor. Theorized a hardware issue but three other probes experienced similar power spikes at the same altitude.