Venus

9/25/05 – 10/1/05

By C. Zaitz

Beautiful sister
Goddess of Love and Beauty
Twilight is her throne

Hotter than Hades
Sulfuric acid rains down
First breath is your last

If Haiku isn’t your thing, then let’s talk in prose. Venus can be seen tonight glowing among the colors of the sunset. She’s the brightest thing in the west after the sun goes down. She really does look beautiful from a distance. She’s even more beautiful through a telescope or binoculars: she will show some of her curves. You might be surprised, but sometimes Venus will appear like a tiny half moon through binoculars. She orbits closer to the sun than the earth does, so we see part of her lit side, and part of her unlit side. In a month you will see her in her crescent shape through binoculars and she will still be very bright, though most of her dark side is facing us at that point. You can thank her thick, shiny clouds for her brilliancy. They reflect a lot of sunlight, but they also give earth’s twin sister a darker side.

Venus is slightly smaller than earth. She has most of the same elements found on the earth- oxygen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen in the atmosphere- and she has a metallic iron core and a rocky mantle. However, 96% of her air is carbon dioxide, which is very different from earth. Carbon dioxide is considered a “greenhouse effect” gas because it tends to be transparent to visible light, but it soaks up infrared or “heat” energy very well. Sunlight can come streaming through the air, but when it hits the ground, it becomes heat. Earthlings rely on some of the heat escaping back into space to keep us cool. Greenhouse gases prevent that from happening, and that is why Venus is so very hot. Venus can reach a temperature of 900 degrees Fahrenheit on the surface. That’s twice as hot as a pizza oven. Air on Venus weighs ninety times more than earth’s air. The sulfur in the air mixes with the other gases and becomes sulfuric acid, which promptly rains down to the surface. Robotic probes sent to this alien world can’t withstand the pressures and heat, so we don’t even think about going there in person.

Luckily most of earth’s carbon dioxide is bound in the rocks and oceans of earth, not in the air like Venus. However, we are releasing vast amounts of carbon dioxide into our air by burning fossil fuels. While politicians debate about the possible effects of this, gigantic rafts of ice are breaking off the polar caps and floating away to melt in the oceans. All planets change, but we are the only one with inhabitants who care about these changes. We need only look up in the sunset at beautiful, hot, shiny and suffocating Venus to remind us how things can go badly for a planet.

Venus appears beautiful in the sky, but once you get to know her, she turns ugly. That’s what makes her so interesting and inspiring. If you’re feeling creative, email me your Venus Haiku and I’ll post it! Remember: the first line has five syllables, second has seven, and the last has five. It doesn’t have to rhyme.

Until next week, my friends, enjoy the view!