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Venus

Bahnhof Strasse

Bahnhof Strasse

Met up with Hannah Courtoy a week next Tuesday
I know it is covered in clouds, a tad warm and rains sulphuric acid, but...

It has long been my contention that Venus had life along the lines that Earth does now.

It is a very similar size to Earth, close enough to the sun, and crucially seems to my uneducated mind to have had all the same ingredients for life that we have here.

Reading up on the place it seems that it’s been a bit ropey for a while, but probably had a couple of billion years of being peachy like Earth. And then it got hot, and carried on getting more hot and then turned in to the nightmare that it currently is.

Is it a prophetic lesson for us here? Should we send Boris Johnson up to have a looksee?

I reckon proof that life existed outside of Earth will be found there, not on Mars, which looks like it’s always been a bit of a shithole.
 
In London we can rarely see stars or planets because of the light pollution. Sometimes I can see the Big Dipper/Starry Plough (Ursa Major constellation).
I always assumed the brightest star I could see was the North Star (Polaris - which is actually three stars). But having taken a bit more interest in the cosmos after watching Prof Brian Cox's programs, I think that it is actually Venus which is apparently the brightest object in the night sky after the Moon. I can see it at the moment from my bedroom window when the sky is clear. I watch it until I drift off to sleep, thinking that if someone was up there the Earth would look similar to them.
 
This is what Earth and Venus looks like from Mars, so probably something similar.

Earth-from-Mars-Aug-12-with-Phobos.jpg
 
tony.c said:
In London we can rarely see stars or planets because of the light pollution. Sometimes I can see the Big Dipper/Starry Plough (Ursa Major constellation).
I always assumed the brightest star I could see was the North Star (Polaris - which is actually three stars). But having taken a bit more interest in the cosmos after watching Prof Brian Cox's programs, I think that it is actually Venus which is apparently the brightest object in the night sky after the Moon. I can see it at the moment from my bedroom window when the sky is clear. I watch it until I drift off to sleep, thinking that if someone was up there the Earth would look similar to them.
Click to expand...
At the moment, Venus doesn't rise (in the north eastern sky) until just after 2AM and should be visible until just before sunrise. In the southern sky, Jupiter and Saturn are quite visible in the late evening.

Which Planets Can You See Tonight?
 
fishfinger said:
At the moment, Venus doesn't rise (in the north eastern sky) until just after 2AM and should be visible until just before sunrise.
Click to expand...
The bright object I can see from about 10pm wouldn't be Venus then. It must be the North Star (Polaris)?
 
tony.c said:
The bright object I can see from about 10pm wouldn't be Venus then. It must be the North Star (Polaris)?
Click to expand...
The visibility of the planets varies through the year (and between years) so it depends what you mean. Do you mean at 10pm at the moment or more generally?

If they are visible, the order of luminosity of objects in the sky goes:

Sun
Moon
Venus
Jupiter
Mars (which can rise to third occasionally, I understand)
Saturn
Sirius (by far the brightest star)
Canopus (Southern Hemisphere only)
Rigil Kentaurus & Toliman (ie Alpha Centauri)
Arcturus
Vega

The North Star, Polaris, is actually way down the list, but it’s easily identifiable and tends to stand out.

It’s been mentioned already that Jupiter and Saturn are spectacularly visible in early evening at the moment. They’re in a rare conjunction, so you can see them beautifully side by side, largely before the stars appear. My guess is that you’re seeing that.
 
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tony.c said:
The bright object I can see from about 10pm wouldn't be Venus then. It must be the North Star (Polaris)?
Click to expand...
If you're looking south the bright one will be Jupiter like kabbes said and Saturn will be nearby to the left of it. And Mars is bright now further round to the left. It's about 10 degrees up in the East at midnight and about 30 degrees up in the SE at 2am at the moment.

This is a good site with a weekly guide to what you can see: This Week's Sky at a Glance, August 7 – 15 - Sky & Telescope

The height of the North star will be the same as your latitude. If you know the plough you can find it using the pointer stars.
 
The sun, the moon and Venus are the only heavenly bodies that can cast a shadow on earth.

Way back in the day (5000 years+), the people who built Newgrange, Newgrange - Wikipedia, recognised that the moon has a wobbly orbit, but Venus doesn't.

I spent the other day in the garden, and noticed that the sun is lower in the sky, by tea time I had moved about half way across the garden to stay in the fixed umbrella's shadow. Way back, someone noticed this phenomenon and used the information to create the first calendar, to enable people to plant at the right time for the best harvest.
 
It blows my mind that we have actually sent landers to Venus, and sent pictures back of its surface. Not many people know about it though, because the landers can only survive for two hours. Only the Soviets ever did it though, and we've not landed anything there since 1984.

hpdqtm0d3kn31.jpg
 
At the start of lockdown Venus was high in the sky every night for a good month or so, often next to the early evening moon. Always a beautiful sight, during that period of intense confusion and uncertainty it gave me great comfort, just being there, getting on with its shit.
 
Bahnhof Strasse said:
At the start of lockdown Venus was high in the sky every night for a good month or so, often next to the early evening moon. Always a beautiful sight, during that period of intense confusion and uncertainty it gave me great comfort, just being there, getting on with its shit.
Click to expand...
Yes and we had the ISS space station appearing most nights, regular as clockwork. I'm sure it went between Venus and the moon one night. It was a weird but welcome constant.
 
Looks like Venus may be geologically active after all. Scientists have examined features called coronae (singular corona) on the surface of the planet, and have found features consistent with recent geological activity. These locations provide potential points of interest for future explorations of Venus.

I've always thought that Venus is an under-appreciated planet. Most people dismiss it as a hell-world, but there is in fact layer high up in the atmosphere of Venus which is relatively comfortable compared to most places that aren't Earth. We would not need to wait until thousands of years of hard work has been done to terraform the planet.
 
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