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The story about Venus for children contains information about what the temperature is on Venus, about its satellites and features. You can supplement your message about Venus with interesting facts.

Brief message about Venus

Venus is the second planet from the Sun. Bears the name of the ancient Roman goddess of love. Thanks to its bright shine, it is clearly visible even to the naked eye. In ancient times it was called the “morning” and “evening star”. This is our planet's neighbor, in size and appearance these planets are also similar.

Venus is surrounded by a fairly dense atmosphere consisting of carbon dioxide. There are mountains and plains on the surface, and volcanic eruptions occur frequently.

Temperatures on the surface of Venus reach over 400 degrees Celsius because the planet is covered by dense layers of clouds that trap heat.

However, on the shadow side on Venus the temperature is about 20 degrees below zero, because the sun's rays do not reach here for a very long time. Venus has no satellites.

Message about Venus for children

Venus is the second planet of the solar system. Named after Venus, the goddess of love from the Roman pantheon. It is the only one of the eight major planets in the solar system to be named after a female deity.

Venus is sometimes called "Earth's sister" because the two planets are similar in size, gravity, and composition. However, conditions on the two planets are very different.

In the atmosphere 96% carbon dioxide, the rest is nitrogen with a small amount of other compounds. According to its structure the atmosphere is dense, deep and very cloudy. But the surface of the planet is difficult to see due to a peculiar “greenhouse effect”. The pressure there is 85 times greater than ours. The composition of the surface in its density resembles the basalts of the Earth, but it itself is extremely dry due to the complete absence of liquid and high temperatures. The temperature on the planet rises to 462°C.

The crust is 50 kilometers thick and consists of silicate rocks. Upper layer soil is close to that of the earth, and the surface is strewn with thousands of volcanoes.

• One axial revolution (sidereal day) takes 243 days, and the orbital path covers 225 days. A sunny day lasts 117 days. This the longest day on all planets in the solar system.

Another one interesting feature- Venus, unlike other planets in the system, rotates in the opposite direction - from east to west. It is also distinguished by the absence of satellites.

Characteristics of the planet:

• Distance from the Sun: 108.2 million km
• Planet diameter: 12,103 km
• Day on the planet: 243 days 14 min*
• Year on the planet: 224.7 days*
• t° on the surface: +470 °C
• Atmosphere: 96% carbon dioxide; 3.2% nitrogen; there is some oxygen
• Satellites: doesn't have

* period of rotation around own axis(in earth days)
**period of orbit around the Sun (in Earth days)

Venus is very often called the “sister” of the Earth, since their sizes and masses are very close to each other, but significant differences are observed in their atmosphere and the surface of the planets. After all, if most of the Earth is covered by oceans, then it is simply impossible to see water on Venus.

Presentation: planet Venus

According to scientists, the surface of the planet was once also represented by water, but at a certain moment there was a strong increase in the internal temperature of Venus and all the oceans simply evaporated, and the vapors were carried into space by the solar wind.

Venus is the second closest planet to the Sun, having an orbital shape close to a perfect circle. It is located 108 million kilometers from the Sun. Unlike most planets in the solar system, its movement occurs in the opposite direction, not from west to east, but from east to west. In this case, the rotation of Venus in relation to the Earth occurs in 146 days, and the rotation around its own axis takes place over 243 days.

The radius of Venus is 95% of the Earth's and is equal to 6051.8 km, of which the thickness of the crust is about 16 km, and the silicate shell, called the mantle, is 3300 km. Beneath the mantle is an iron core that has no magnetic field, which accounts for a quarter of the planet's mass. At the center of the core the density is 14 g/cm 3 .

It became possible to fully study the surface of Venus only with the advent of radar methods, thanks to which large hills were identified, which in size can be compared with earth's continents. About 90% of the surface is covered with basaltic lava, which is in a frozen state. A special feature of the planet are numerous craters, the formation of which can be attributed to a time when the density of the atmosphere was much lower. Today, the pressure at the very surface of Venus is about 93 atm, while at the surface the temperature reaches 475 o C, at an altitude of about 60 km it ranges from -125 to -105 o C, and in the region of 90 km it begins again increase to 35-70 o C.

A weak wind blows near the surface of the planet, which becomes very strong as the altitude increases to 50 km and is about 300 meters per second. In the atmosphere of Venus, which extends to an altitude of 250 km, a phenomenon called a thunderstorm is observed, and it occurs twice as often as on Earth. The atmosphere is 96% carbon dioxide and only 4% nitrogen. The remaining elements are practically not observed, the oxygen content does not exceed 0.1%, and water vapor is no more than 0.02%.

To the human eye, Venus is clearly visible even without a telescope, especially an hour after sunset and about an hour before sunrise, since the planet's dense atmosphere reflects light well. Using a telescope, you can easily monitor the changes occurring in the visible phase of the disk.

Research using spacecraft have been carried out since the seventies of the last century different countries, but the first photographs were obtained only in 1975, in 1982 the first color images were obtained. Difficult conditions on the surface do not allow work to be carried out for more than two hours, but today it is planned to send a Russian station with a probe that can operate for about a month in the near future.

Venus transits the solar disk four times every 250 years, which in the near future is now expected only in December 2117, since the last time the phenomenon was observed was in June 2012.

On the distant star Venus
The sun is fiery and golden,
On Venus, ah, on Venus
The trees have blue leaves.

Nikolay Gumilyov

The planet of the Roman goddess of love and beauty, the morning and evening star... You've probably seen it - early in the morning, when the sun is about to rise, it is the last to disappear in the brightening sky. Or, on the contrary, it is the first to light up against the background of a fading sunset - the brightest, not counting the Sun and Moon, 17 times brighter than the brightest star - Sirius. If you look closely, it doesn’t even look like a star - it doesn’t twinkle, but shines with an even white light.

But at midnight you will never see her. For an earthly observer, Venus does not move away from the Sun more than 48°, because we are looking at its orbit “from the outside.” Therefore, Venus is clearly visible in two cases: when it is to the right, west of the Sun - this is called western elongation - at this time she sits down before the Sun and rises before the Sun, so it is clearly visible before sunrise; and when it is to the left of the Sun and follows it across the sky during the day, then it is visible in the evening (Fig. 1). The period when the planet is close to the Earth-Sun line is called connection(the planet “connects” with the Sun), at this time it is not visible.

However, this is not entirely true. Venus is not visible to the eye when it is close to the Sun, but through a telescope - if you know exactly where to look for it - you can see it. (By the way, the task is to draw what Venus looks like through a telescope, for example, in eastern elongation.) And occasionally it happens that for an earthly observer it passes not near the Sun, but directly across its disk. During such a passage, observing it through a telescope, Lomonosov discovered the atmosphere of Venus. Whenever O Most of Venus was already on the disk of the Sun; for a moment he saw a thin luminous rim around the rest of the planet (Fig. 2). Many people saw this headband, but did not attach any importance to it. And only Lomonosov realized that it was the oblique rays of the sun that illuminated the atmosphere of the planet, like a flashlight in the dark illuminates smoke and makes it visible.

This atmosphere was not a gift at all. To begin with, it turned out that it is opaque to “ordinary” (visible) light and does not allow one to see the surface of the planet: it’s like trying to see the bottom of a pan through a layer of milk. But people learned the main thing only when they tried to land a descent module on Venus.

Venus is almost the same size as the Earth, and not much smaller in mass; it would seem that these two planets are almost the same. So, even at the beginning of the twentieth century, it was possible to assume that trees grow on Venus and that anyone lives at all. Or that, for example, earthlings could settle on it. However, these hopes were not justified: the first device that tried to land on Venus (in 1967) was crushed before it even reached the surface!

It turned out that Venus has monstrous atmospheric pressure: almost 100 times more than on Earth. On every square centimeter of the surface, a column of air presses with such force as if a hundred-kilogram weight were placed on this centimeter on Earth! The density of Venusian “air” is only 14 times less than the density of water. The temperature is always - both during the day and at night - equal to 470°C, more than in the hottest place on Mercury! In addition, the atmosphere, consisting mainly of carbon dioxide (CO 2), contains a bunch of poisonous and caustic sulfur compounds, including sulfuric acid. Until now, not a single descent vehicle - and there were about a dozen of them - has lasted in this environment for more than two hours...

Try to imagine this picture. The sky on Venus is orange, always covered with clouds of sulfuric acid. The sun is never visible behind a continuous layer of clouds. Naturally, there is no water - at this temperature it has evaporated long ago (and before, it seems, there were oceans!). Sometimes acid rain falls (literally: instead of water there is acid), but it does not reach the surface - it evaporates from the heat. There is almost no wind below, only 1 m/s, but the “air” is so dense that even such a weak wind raises dust and small stones, all of this seems to be floating in the air. But above, at the height of the clouds, a giant hurricane is constantly raging - the wind speed there reaches 100 m/s, that is, 360 km/h, and even more! (Where this hurricane came from is still unknown.)

How did this happen? Why is this picture so different from the one on earth? Let's figure it out.

Sulfur compounds and carbon dioxide (of which 96% on Venus) entered the atmosphere from volcanoes. There are many volcanoes - thousands, the entire surface is covered with frozen lava. Perhaps some of the volcanoes are still active, but so far it has not been possible to see eruptions on Venus.

All of these “volcanic” gases have heavy molecules: for example, a carbon dioxide molecule weighs 1.5 times more than the nitrogen and oxygen molecules that make up the earth’s atmosphere. And there are a lot of them. That’s why the “air” there is so dense and heavy.

Why is the temperature so high? Again, volcanic gases are to blame, primarily carbon dioxide. He creates the so-called Greenhouse effect, the essence of which is this. The sun illuminates the planet (Earth, for example) and thereby heats it, transferring some energy to it every second (through rays of light). Thanks to this energy, winds blow, rivers flow, plants and animals live. But energy never disappears, it can only transform from one type to another. We ate a sandwich - the (chemical) energy hidden in it was spent on heating our body. A river flows - the water hits the stones and also heats them up. So, ultimately, the energy transferred by the Sun to the planet turns into heat - the planet warms up. Where does the energy go next? The heated surface of the planet emits slightly different radiation, invisible to the eye - infrared. The hotter the surface, the stronger the radiation. This radiation goes into space and carries away “extra” energy - exactly as much as it comes from the Sun. A balance is maintained: as much as you take, return as much.

What if you return (that is, emit) less than you took (received from the Sun)? Energy will begin to accumulate on the planet, and the temperature of the surface and air will rise. A more heated surface emits more infrared rays - and soon equilibrium will be restored, but at a higher temperature.

The greenhouse effect is overheating, which arises precisely from such a temporary imbalance. The fact is that carbon dioxide absorbs infrared rays. The surface of the planet emits them, but the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does not release them out into space! Inside solar energy It gets in with visible light, but the atmosphere doesn’t let it out. This is how energy accumulates until the entire atmosphere warms up so much that its upper layer can finally radiate the required amount of energy into space and restore balance. This is what happened on Venus - in order to restore balance, its surface had to heat up by 400 degrees. This can happen to the Earth if too much carbon dioxide and other “complex” gases accumulate in its atmosphere!

There is another interesting feature. Almost everything in the solar system - all the planets and b O Most of the asteroids revolve around the Sun in the same direction. And everything is around the axis major planets rotate in the same direction - all but one. Venus rotates “unlike everyone else,” however, very slowly: 1 revolution around its axis in 243 Earth days, while the Venusian year lasts 225 Earth days. That is, Venus rotates around the Sun even a little faster than around its axis! Having trained on Mercury, you will, of course, easily figure out how long the day would be and how long the night would be on Venus if these two periods coincided (this answer is almost real, since the difference is small). The resonance with the Sun is again incomplete - and again, perhaps the reason is in the Earth: just as Mercury in its “waltz” always turns to us with the same side when meeting, so Venus in each conjunction with the Sun is turned to the Earth in the same way. So there is an inaccurate resonance with the Sun, but there is a resonance with the Earth.

Why is she spinning in the wrong direction? Unclear. There are different hypotheses, each more doubtful than the other. All of them, one way or another, boil down to the fact that “in childhood” some kind of misfortune happened to Venus. Someone pushed or hit... But the answer to the previous question is well-known - why do all the other planets spin so amicably (and all except Mercury quickly) in the same direction? Try to guess.

Answers

1. When looking through a telescope, Venus's disk is clearly visible, so its phases are also visible - like those of the Moon. And for the same reason: only its illuminated side is visible. In eastern elongation we see exactly half a circle “in the shape of the letter P” (see Fig. 1 of the article), like the Moon in the first quarter. But unlike the Moon, the month of Venus does not grow at this time, but decreases: then the Earth and the Sun will be on opposite sides of it, and its crescent will become very narrow.

2. If the year and sidereal day coincided, day and night would last a quarter of a year - see the figure below. In fact, a solar day on Venus lasts 116 Earth days, that is, more than half a year, but less than half a sidereal day.

3. Rotation (both annual and daily) in one direction is a consequence of a common origin. All the planets were “stick together” from lumps (planetesimals) in a large protoplanetary cloud, which, as a whole, slowly rotated in one (random) direction, like soup in a pan if you stir it slightly with a spoon. When the Sun was formed, the entire cloud became denser (shrinked towards the center) and, like a figure skater who pressed his hands to his body in a “screw”, began to rotate faster; in physics this is called conservation of angular momentum. Individual lumps also compressed (and very strongly), forming planets, and their rotation around their axis greatly accelerated. Therefore, the planets rotate around their axis quickly; Mercury slowed down only later.

Artist Maria Useinova

On Earth, such pressure can also be found - in the ocean, at a depth of 1 km.

In fact, there is a small greenhouse effect (not due to carbon dioxide, but due to water vapor) on Earth, and it is very useful: without it, the temperature would be 20–30 degrees lower than it is now.

Formally, Uranus is also spinning “in the wrong direction,” but we’ll talk about it separately.

You just need to draw a picture... If that doesn't work, see the answers.

The planet Venus is our closest neighbor. Venus comes closer to Earth than any other planet, at a distance of 40 million km or closer. The distance from the Sun to Venus is 108,000,000 km, or 0.723 AU.

Venus's dimensions and mass are close to those of Earth: the diameter of the planet is only 5% less than the diameter of the Earth, its mass is 0.815 that of the Earth, and its gravity is 0.91 that of the Earth. At the same time, Venus rotates very slowly around its axis in the direction opposite to the rotation of the Earth (i.e., from east to west).

Despite the fact that in the XVII-XVIII centuries. various astronomers have repeatedly reported the discovery natural satellites Venus. It is currently known that the planet does not have any.

Atmosphere of Venus

Unlike other planets terrestrial group, studying Venus using telescopes turned out to be impossible, since M. V. Lomonosov (1711 - 1765), observing the passage of the planet against the background of the Sun on June 6, 1761, he established that Venus is surrounded by “noble air atmosphere, such (if only not more) than that which is poured around our globe.”

The planet's atmosphere extends to a height 5500 km, and its density is 35 times the density of the earth. Atmosphere pressure V 100 times higher than on Earth, and reaches 10 million Pa. The structure of the atmosphere of this planet is shown in Fig. 1.

The last time astronomers, scientists and amateurs were able to observe the passage of Venus against the background of the solar disk in Russia was on June 8, 2004. And on June 6, 2012 (i.e., with an 8-year interval), this amazing phenomenon can be observed again. The next passage will take place only after 100 years.

Rice. 1. The structure of the atmosphere of Venus

In 1967, the Soviet interplanetary probe Venera 4 for the first time transmitted information about the planet’s atmosphere, which consists of 96% carbon dioxide (Fig. 2).

Rice. 2. Composition of the atmosphere of Venus

Due to the high concentration of carbon dioxide, which, like a film, retains heat at the surface, the planet experiences a typical greenhouse effect (Fig. 3). Thanks to the greenhouse effect, any existence near the surface of Venus is excluded liquid water. The air temperature on Venus is approximately +500 °C. In such conditions organic life excluded.

Rice. 3. Greenhouse effect on Venus

On October 22, 1975, the Soviet probe Venera 9 landed on Venus and transmitted a television report from this planet to Earth for the first time.

General characteristics of the planet Venus

Thanks to Soviet and American interplanetary stations, it is now known that Venus is a planet with complex terrain.

Mountainous terrain with a height difference of 2-3 km, a volcano with a base diameter of 300-400 km, and you
the hundredth is about 1 km, a huge basin (length 1500 km from north to south and 1000 km from west to east) and relatively flat areas. In the equatorial region of the planet there are more than 10 ring structures, similar to the craters of Mercury, with a diameter of 35 to 150 km, but highly smoothed and flat. In addition, in the planet’s crust there is a fault 1500 km long, 150 km wide and about 2 km deep.

In 1981, the stations “Venera-13” and “Venera-14” examined samples of the planet’s soil and transmitted the first color photographs of Venus to the ground. Thanks to this, we know that the surface rocks of the planet are similar in composition to terrestrial sedimentary rocks, and the sky above the horizon of Venus is orange-yellow-green.

At present, human flights to Venus are unlikely, but at an altitude of 50 km from the planet, the temperature and pressure are close to conditions on Earth, so it is possible to create interplanetary stations here to study Venus and to recharge spacecraft.