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Venus, Our Sister Planet

© Dina Ely

Venus is a beautiful planet. When visible from Earth, it shines as brightly as our most brilliant stars. It is no surprise that the planet gets its name from the Roman Goddess of Love and Beauty, Venus (known as Aphrodite to the Greeks).

But for all its outward beauty, Venus is a strange and tumultuous planet. It is the second planet from the Sun, and as such, a Venusian year is much shorter than an Earth year (Venus takes only 224 days to orbit the Sun). On the other hand, Venus rotates on its axis much, much slower than Earth. Whereas Earth rotates its axis in 24 hours (i.e. an Earth day), it takes Venus 243 days to complete its rotation!

Our Sun, Moon, and Venus are the three brightest objects in our night sky. Depending on the time of the year, Venus is fondly called the "Morning Star" or the "Evening Star" (names it shares with Mars, which is also very visible at certain times of the year). Many poets have praised Venus for its beauty and its high visibility. Edgar Allen Poe, Henry Wordsworth Longfellow, and William Blake all wrote poems to the Evening Star.

Venus is one of the few planets in our solar system to have no moons or other satellites orbiting it. Even Pluto, as far away and removed from the rest of the system as it is, has one moon. There are a lot of theories about why Venus is missing a moon. One controversial theory suggests that Venus is not really a planet, but an enormous piece of Jupiter that was severed from the planet by a comet or meteor. Venus then shot out of Jupiter's orbit, past Mars and Earth, until it settled into its own space between Earth and Mercury. There are myths in many ancient cultures on Earth that support the theory that a very large object blazed a trail across the sky from Jupiter's space to the space now occupied by Venus.

Other theories about Venus's formation include that Earth and Venus formed from the same nebula around the same time, and many people consider Earth and Venus "sister planets". Their mass, size, and other measurements are very similar.

More facts about Venus:

- There is slightly less gravity on Venus than on Earth (.91 times).

- Venus is about 600km smaller than Earth (across the diameter).

- Venus is about 108 million km from the Sun (Earth is about 152).

The copyright of the article Venus, Our Sister Planet in The Solar System is owned by Dina Ely. Permission to republish Venus, Our Sister Planet in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.