Venus
The atmosphere of Venus is so thick that the Sun is not distinguishable in the daytime sky, and the stars are not visible at night. Color images taken by the Soviet Venera probes suggest that the sky on Venus is orange-red. If the Sun could be seen from Venus's surface, the time from one sunrise to the next (a solar day) would be 116.75 Earth days. Because of Venus's retrograde rotation, the Sun would appear to rise in the west and set in the east.
An observer aloft in Venus's cloud tops, on the other hand, would whip around the planet in about four days and be treated to a sky in which Earth and the Moon shine brightly (about magnitudes −6.6 and −2.7, respectively) because their maximum approach occurs at opposition. Mercury would also be easy to spot, because it is closer and brighter, at up to magnitude −2.7, and because its maximum elongation from the Sun is considerably larger (40.5°) than when observed from Earth (28.3°).
Read more about this topic: Extraterrestrial Skies
Famous quotes containing the word venus:
“Knaves and fools
have done you impious wrong,
Venus, for venery stands for impurity
and Venus as desire
is venereous, lascivious.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“For her own person,
It beggared all description: she did lie
In her pavilion—cloth of gold, of tissue—
O’er-picturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“In the drawing room [of the Queen’s palace] hung a Venus and Cupid by Michaelangelo, in which, instead of a bit of drapery, the painter has placed Cupid’s foot between Venus’s thighs. Queen Caroline asked General Guise, an old connoisseur, if it was not a very fine piece? He replied “Madam, the painter was a fool, for he has placed the foot where the hand should be.””
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)