Well all know at least a little about the planet Venus, where darling Minako hails from. But there are some interesting tidbits that I'm going to throw at you. I thought of pasting the mumbled madness at you, but decided since I'm reading this, I'll dumb it up a bit. For my benefit of course. Not yours.
Venus is the second planet from the Sun and the sixth largest. Venus' orbit is the most nearly circular of that of any planet, with an eccentricity of less than 1%.
- orbit: 108,200,000 km (0.72 AU) from Sun
- diameter: 12,103.6 km
- mass: 4.869e24 kg
The planet was named for the Roman Goddess, Venus (Greek-Aphrodite Babylonian- Ishtar) who was the goddess of love and beauty. *shock* This habit for naming things after powerful females continued in the fact that most things (craters, etc.) on Venus are named after strong females from mythology. For example: Atalanta Planitia, Guinevere Planitia, Lavinia Planitia, as well as the two broad depressions: Ishtar Terra in the Northern Hemisphere and along the equator- Aphrodite Terra. For those who wish to envision the size of the later two, Ishtar is about the size of Australia, and Aphrodite is roughly the size of South America. Holy Cow.
Venus' rotation is rather unusual in that it's pretty darn slow (243 Earth days per Venus day) and it is retrograde. Hrmm.. thought here. What if Uranus and Venus are leaders because of that fact? Hrmm. Oh well. Moving on children!
In addition, the periods of Venus' rotation and of its orbit are synchronized such that it always presents the same face toward Earth when the two planets are at their closest approach. Whether this is a resonance effect or merely a coincidence is not known.
Creepy... she's two faced... Wait, that's like Minako always showing us her "happy" face! I can find connections anywhere...
Venus is also sometime refereed to as Earth's sister planet. Why? Read on:
- Venus is only slightly smaller than Earth (85% of Earth's diameter, 80% of Earth's Mass)
- Both have very few craters, leading scientists to believe both are fairly young planets (and I ask you, which senshi act the youngest?)
- Their densities and chemical compositions are similar.
Too bad Venus is covered by a thick cloud of poisonous gasses such as carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid. That's gonna kill your lungs. Also, due to such a harsh atmosphere, the surface of the planet is roughly 740 Kelvin (this kiddies, is hot enough to melt LEAD) Stupid fact. Venus' surface temperature is actually HOTTER than Mercury's even though it is twice as far away from the sun. Always knew she was one hot chica.
For those of you hoping for at least a good breeze when you move to Venus, don't count on it. While there are fairly strong winds (try 350kph baby!) at the cloud tops, the surface gets so little they don't even give you an average. Does this planet have annnnny redeeming qualities?
Well, if you like it *hot*, Venus is covered by lava flows, and is still considered volcanically active, even though for the most part, she's been geologically quiet for the past few hundred million years. Hundred Million and it's young? Sheeesh...
Another interesting fact is that there are no small craters on Venus. What's that mean to you, the average Minako fan? Remember Armageddon and Deep Impact? You don't have to worry about being crushed on your lawn chair while ogling Brad Pitt because.. due to Venus' dense atmosphere, the meteors burn up before hitting the planet. Because the craters that *are* on Venus are in bunches, scientists believe those nasty meteors that do make it through, well they get burned to a nice crisp and then shatter. Whooo.. A defense mechanism built into the planet!
More useless trivia for travelers:
Venus has no magnetic field and no satellites, although some scientists in the past swear they saw something. Hrmm...
Venus is visible to the naked eye, and is sometimes refereed to as the morning or evening star, even though it is a planet. Go see!