This report is about Venus the jewel of the sky. This planet is also known as the morning star or evening star. "Venus" is named after the Roman goddess of beauty and love because it is the most beautiful planet in the galaxy. It is also the hottest in our solar system.
Venus is the second planet from the sun and the Earth's closest neighbor. Seen from the Earth, it is the brighter than any object in the sky except the sun and the moon. The elongation (the angle between the sun, the Earth and Venus) is 47 degrees. This means you can never see Venus much longer than 3 hours after sunset or 3 hours before the sunrise.
The distance between the sun and Venus is around 107 millon km (67 million mi), and between Venus and Earth is 42 million km (26 million mi). Astronomers refer to Venus as the sister planet of the Earth. Both planets are simliar in mass, density, size and volume, and both were formed at the same time and condensed out of the same nebula. But actually Venus is different from the Earth.
The rotation period (a Venusian day) in a retrograde direction (opposite of the revolution around the sun) is 243 Earth days long. Also Venus rotates from East to West. The ravolution is about 225 days long. The magnitic field is not strong compared to that of the Earth.
The atmosphere of Venus is mainly made up of carbon dioxide (96%), but also composed of nitrogen (3.5%) and less than 1% of carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, argon, and water vapor. Clouds of sulfuric acid cover the planet completely. The pressure of the atmosphere is 92 times higher that the Earth's at sea-level. The greenhouse effect makes Venus the hottest planet in our solar system. This effect occurs when the atmosphere traps energy from the sun and mixes it with the heat the planet releases at the planet surface. The temperature is about 482 degrees celsius (900 degrees F).
Space missions to Venus have shown that the surface is covered with craters, mountains, volcanoes, large highland terrains, and vast lava plains. Compared to the number of craters from asteroids and comets on the other bodies of the inner solar system, Venus has very few craters. This suggests that the surface of Venus is only about 800 million years old.
Four of the most succesful missions in revealing the Venusian surface are NASA's Pioneer Venus Mission (1978), the Soviet Unions's Venera 15th and 16th missions (1983-1984), and NASA's Magellan radar mapping mission (1990-1994).
Venus is one of the most interesting planets in our solar system. We wouldn't be able to visit this planet because we couln't breathe the air. We would be crushed by the enormous weight of the atmosphere and we would burn up in surface temperatures, which are hot enough to melt lead.
You can see Venus rising in the east 3 1/2 hours before sunup all of November and the first half of December.

 written by Josephine Fleischer