Venus Probe Returns First Images

The BBC reports on the first images returned from Venus by the EU probe. From the article: "They show the hothouse planet's south pole from a distance of 206,452km. Mission scientists are already intrigued by a dark 'vortex' feature which can be clearly seen in one image. Venus Express will orbit the planet for about 500 Earth days to study its atmosphere, which is thought to have undergone runaway greenhouse warming." They're offering some high-rez images of the planet at the ESA website.

Comments

Re:Earth days?

[LiquidCoooled]

Yes the clarification was necessary, each planet has its own definition of a day (that is, a complete rotation about its axis).

A single day on Venus takes 243 of our days.

ESA is not a part of the EU

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a minor correction - but the European Space Agency is not a part of the EU - and countries outside the EU participate as well.

Celsius

[Crouty]

Oh i dunno.. maybe the avergae temperature being on avg. 890F, for example?

Nah, we're talking Europe here, buddy, so it's 467C. Lest we're talking astrophysics, in which case it would be 740 K.

Re:Whoa

[ichandarin]

For everyone who doesn't have anything intelligent to say... here's someone who does: the Planetary society has a good report on the findings at http://www.planetary.org/news/2006/0414_First_Venu s_Express_VIRTIS_Images_Peel.html

High Res Images

[imboboage0]

They're offering some high-rez images of the planet at the ESA website.

Well they were anyway, until they posted a link on the Slashdot front page.

Re:well duh

[Foobar of Borg]

Then explain why it is significantly hotter than even the sun-side of mercur even though it gets 3 times less solar energy per m^2?

Well, for one thing, Mercury's atmosphere is extremely thin and contains things like sodium and potassium. Venus has a very thick atmosphere which helps keep much of the heat locked in.

Re:Has to be green house gases

[ScriptedReplay]

It cant possibly be that Venus is 23 million miles closer to the sun. It cant be that Venus is 25% closer to the Sun than the Earth. Has to be the carbon dioxide. After all there can be only one cause for any effect.

Well, let's see ... according to wikipedia, here's a small list:

• Mercury surface temperature: 90 K (min) 440 K (avg) 700 K (max)
• Venus surface temperature: 228 K (min, cloud tops) 737 K (avg) 773 K (max)
• Earth surface temperature: 185 K (min) 287 K (avg) 331 K (max)
• to make
  
• Mars surface temperature: 133 K(min) 210 K (avg) 293 K (max)

Now, if distance to the Sun is all there is to explain it, someone messed up really bad with our basic knowledge of the Solar System, for Venus is the hottest inner planet and should obviously be the closest to the Sun. No way it could be about twice further from it than Mercury.

Also, could you please enlighten us how can it be that the temperature difference between night and day on Venus is so small in spite of the rotation period being about 243 Earth days? wouldn't ~4 Earth-months worth of night be enough to cool that side of the planet? after all, Mercury's day is almost 4 timers shorter than Venus' and the max. temperature is close, but the min temperature on Mercury is low enough for high Tc superconductivity.

Re:Venus 'days' are long ...

[Floody]

... real long. Look it up, genius.

Venus has no "days" or "nights", at least not any perceivable by human beings. If you were standing anywhere on the surface of Venus (ignore for a moment a few minor environmental complications that would make such a tad unpleasant), all you would see was a very murky and very dark twilight with no discernable light-source other than perhaps a very very faint glow from all directions. It would look like this all the time, no matter what time of the "day" or what day of the "year."

Raleigh scattering through Venus' incredibly thick and saturated atmosphere is so significant that no visible light (detectable to the human eye) makes it through without becoming completely diffuse.