Aphrodite

Aphrodite: the Greek goddess of love and beauty. Pronounced: afrodaiti

Venus: the Roman counterpart. Pronounced: veenos.

So I just wanna let you guys know that this article isn’t about the Greek goddess Aphrodite or her Roman counterpart but about the planet Venus. I just felt like adding a little spice to the post with its Greek name. Hold on! Don’t run away, this should be interesting. What do you know about Venus? You might ask, what’s my business with it, is it giving me money? Well the truth is it might not give you money, but nothing is wrong with having a little knowledge about something else, something totally different. With this little seed I’ve planted, let’s talk about Venus.

• Did you know that Venus was once called Lucifer?

I woke up one morning and I went to the balcony. It was about 6:45am. It had been a while I was on the balcony that early, which made me realize that it had been a while I watched the sun rise. I’m a nature lover and watching the sun rise makes me ecstatic. It is so easy to watch the sun rise because my house faces the East and there are no buildings directly opposite it, only trees. I have taken a lot of sunrise pictures from the comfort of my balcony. I uploaded one of the pictures right here.

Watching the sunset isn’t so easy though, but my room gives a little view of it. 

So, I’m outside, admiring the sun lurking behind the blue clouds, seeing layers and layers of clouds and wondering how far off they go. I also see an airplane gliding gracefully across the sky, moving in and out of the clouds. It was so far away so it appeared really small, like a bird. Anyways, it soon disappeared in the vastness of the sky and my eyes went back to the sun, rising majestically and before I knew it, I was in space. 

I’ve always been attracted to the extra terrestrial, since I was a child. I’ve written poems and short write ups about space. Don’t ask me about aliens! I grew up wanting to be an astronaut. Reason: just to see how Earth looked from space. Anyways, that dream didn’t work out. Lol. Okay, so I’m still lost in space this morning and I decided to read more on the closest planet to the sun, which is Mercury but I ended up reading on Venus and boy did I enjoy it. 

Take a chill pill! Relax! I know you’re anxious about my first point. I’m coming to that now. So, before you go all “christian” on me, Lucifer means “bringer of light” and the reason Venus was once called that is because of how bright it is. Venus was once thought to be the morning star and evening star. The early astronomers thought they saw different stars in the morning and evening but it was later discovered that what they saw was the same thing, Venus.  Venus is the second brightest thing in our night sky, the first is our moon. So you see why it was called Lucifer. It is possible that some of us have seen Venus in the sky and thought it to be a star.

Along the line, Lucifer couldn’t quite portray everything about this planet so it was named Venus instead, after the Roman goddess of love and beauty. It is also the only planet named after a goddess. Venus was once seen as a tropical paradise, a bright place, a beautiful place. We will know why it’s not even close to a paradise soon, but it’s still bright.

• Did you know that a day on Venus is longer than a year?

Weird right. You have no idea how hard I’ve tried to wrap my mind round this. The distance of Venus from the sun is about 108.2 million km. So it takes it about 224days 17 hours, approximately 225days to revolve round the sun. That’s less than Earth’s year. But the funny thing is how long it takes it to rotate round the sun. So, the earth just takes 24 hours which is a day, Venus takes about 243 days. Wow! How on Earth, sorry, how on Venus is that possible? Imagine a day being longer than a year here. Lol. Okay, it’s complicated, don’t think about it too much. So the length of day on Venus is about 177 days on Earth. One day on Venus is about 5 months for us. Don’t sweat it. It is what it is! But imagine what you would accomplish if you had such a long day. Would you be happy or would you run mad?

• Did you know that Venus is the hottest planet?

        Bummer right. One would think that the hottest should be Mercury because it’s the closest     to the sun, but it  isn’t. Venus is. The atmosphere of Venus contains about 96.5% carbon dioxide (CO2) and sulphuric acid. If you are a scientist, you would know how dangerous this is to humans. If you’re an environmentalist, you would know how this alone can affect the earth. It is because of this large volume of CO2 that Venus is the hottest planet. The CO2 traps the heat of the sun and something called green house effect happens. You know what green house effect is and how it’s destroying our ozone layer. The temperature of Venus is approximately 471°C which can melt lead. 

So you see why Venus isn’t seen as a paradise anymore. Anything on its surface would melt, before you would even think of breathing. 

• Did you know that Venus has no water bodies?

It’s safe to say that because of how hot Venus is, all forms of liquid would be evaporated from its surface. Let me say something on its pressure here since it can be related to the oceans. So the pressure on Venus is about 90 times that of Earth which is the same as the pressure in the deep oceans found on Earth. Can you imagine living inside the Pacific ocean? Yup, that’s how unpalatable it would be to live on Venus. 

• Did you know Venus has a boyfriend named Maxwell?

Yes! Venus' boyfriend is Maxwell because it got to the highest peak of Venus. Maxwell proved his love because he could go the highest mountains for Venus. Lol, all I’m trying to say is that the highest range in Venus is called the Maxwell range. Like how earth’s is the Himalayans. The Maxwell range is about 870km long and about 11.3km high (7 miles). Venus is made up of about a thousand volcanoes that are very high. Some are said to be dormant while scientists believe that some are very active. Imagine living in a world of volcanoes…hmm, I just thought of what happened to Pompeii and that was just one volcano, Mount Vesuvius. I don’t want to think about how the surface of Venus is.

• Did you know that Venus is Earth’s twin?

As we all know, twins are born together, they may have some similarities and even look alike, but they’re different. That’s the same thing with Earth and Venus. So, their similarities are seen in the size, shape, Mass and density. Earth is just a tiny bit larger than Venus. They even look alike, they are both blue, but for different reasons. While earth is blue because of its seas and oceans, Venus is blue because of the  blue or ultravioilet absorbers in its atmosphere.

Earth has a moon, while Venus doesn’t. It’s like saying a twin has a best friend or a toy while the other  doesn’t. Finally, they move differently, it’s like saying the twins have their own path to follow. While Earth and most of the other planets move in one direction, Venus moves in retrograde rotation, which means it moves in the opposite direction around the sun. In layman’s language, we move clockwise while Venus moves anticlockwise. Uranus also moves anticlockwise.

• Did you know that there’s a space craft orbiting Venus now?

We live in a world where curiosity thrives. Everyone wants to know what happens around them. Thanks to the curiosity of astrologers, astronauts and astronomers, we got to know about what’s outside Earth. Venus was first recorded in 17th century BC by Babylonians and now we know a lot about it. The Russians were the first to send a spacecraft to Venus in the 1960’s. We know how hot Venus is, so it would melt whatever spacecraft that lands on it but astrologers have tried. In fact, the picture on the face of this post is the Global view of Venus in ultraviolet from Japan’s Akatsuki space craft which was launched in 2010. The picture was taken in May 2016.

The points I made were gotten from space facts and space.com.

Despite everything, I still love Venus. It’s unique and still beautiful to me. I know this article isn’t my regular posts here, but I decided to do something different. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you learned something new. The next post would be a great story. I promise you that. Just stay tuned. 

Thank you!

#Liv