A Different Kind of Venus...

Venus recently seems to be a hot topic, and for good reason: the ESA's Venus Express probe has been churning out some very interesting data. You can even check out our most recent Venus post titled The Oceans of Venus for even more information.

We know that the solar wind interacts with the hydrogen in Venus' atmosphere, causing it to forever be lost in space. More recently, we have discovered that oxygen has been escaping the atmosphere all along as well. This is an exciting discovery because since the structure of water, obviously made up of both hydrogen and oxygen, has been escaping into the atmosphere, with enough data, we can reverse this process mathematically and determine how much water has escaped into space.

Venus expert, David Grinspoon, thinks the amount of water is indeed significant: nearly as much as the oceans of Earth (Source: Daily Galaxy). He actually authors a book called Life on Venus, in which he states that 4 billion years ago, when the Sun's heat output was little more than half of its current output, that Earth was likely too cold to support life but Venus would have been right in the middle of the habitable zone.

Daily Galaxy blogger Doug Aamoth brought up an interesting point in his article: if intelligent life existed on Venus we'd have no clue. The solar system is 5 billion years old, and if a civilization were present on Venus, all traces would be completely wiped clean in a mere 50,000 years by natural geologic process. Very intriguing and makes one think: if they were there, could they have made it off the rock before the greenhouse effect ran rampant?

The ESA held a press conference today discussing the findings of the Venus Express. We can look forward to the findings to be officially published in an upcoming issue of the Nature journal, but we can see what researcher Dmitri Titov says about the findings:

"An important first set of results concerns the complex dynamics and
structure of Venus's atmosphere, studied with a whole suite of instruments. The
spacecraft has revealed the structure and movements of the atmosphere, from its
upper reaches to just above the surface, and has obtained the best global map of
atmospheric temperatures to date. This is already improving our understanding of
the global dynamics and the meteorology of Venus." (Source: Astronomy Report)

One thing is for certain: Venus is shaping up to be a much livelier, active planet with a richer and more mysterious past than anyone could have ever guessed. This is a planet we will be watching with a close eye for some time, and who knows, maybe there's an archaelogical ruin or two on the scorching surface?

Venus Through The Treeline

This is a great picture of Venus (yes, Venus, not the moon) through the treeline at about 4:57am EST. Venus is so bright that long exposure photographs, even with my non-DSLR digital camera, makes it appear almost as bright as the moon because of the amount of light collected in the camera's lens. Hope you enjoy this picture as well!

Harmony and Balloons

This is the first article in the new format outlined in the previous post. Hope you enjoy it!

In our Solar System this week I'd like to report on two new exciting changes; Harmony and the big balloon. Most of us know what Harmony is, the newest edition to the International Space Station. It was successfully launched yesterday live on NASA TV, (which, if I have any space fans reading, and I hope I do, is definitely worth a DirectTV bill each month) and the crew is beginning preparations to attach the Harmony module, aptly named by students, the first living space enhancement to the space station since 2001. After the launch, the astronauts could be heard stating the California wildfires were clearly visible from space.

Right now, according to NASAs website, the rendezvous is complete and preparations for the assembly have begun. There are five scheduled spacewalks on this mission; far more than normal on a shuttle mission such as this. The ISS will pave the way back to the Moon for mankind.

In other news, a large solar telescope has been launched on a balloon larger than a Boeing 747. The project, dubbed Sunrise, is an international collaboration to understand the magnetic fields and other atrributes of our Sun.

The ballon will rise more than 120,000 feet in the air, above the denser levels of our atmosphere, and above radiation-blocking water vapor and ozone. The optics on this instrument will be able to document surface features on the Sun to a size of just 19 miles long, which is nearly double the resolution of any current solar telescope (sorry for those of you who shelled out $5000 for a Coronado telescope!)

Balloon-bourne instruments such as this are less expensive to build than traditional spacecraft and their increased availability will likely take us in pursuit of Venus, a planet whose dense atmosphere, poisonous gases, and incendiary temperatures have kept researchers from sending a viable probe to send information back.

The Oceans of Venus

Newly released computer models from the Denver museum of Natural History are presenting a very interesting fact: early Venus may have retained its oceans for more than a billion years.

During Venus' early life, it was constantly bombarded with asteroids. These impacts have significantly reduced the chance of life in previous models. However, the new model adds at least 400 million years to the existence of Venus' oceans. These additional years are very significant because they allow more time for more complex life to exist.

Interest in Venus has possibly been renewed with the sad news that Mars may have been less hospitable to life and even colder in its past than previously thought.

Either way, surface samples from the greenhouse planet would certainly shed some light on its possibly organic past. We may be looking for microbes on Mars, but I'd certainly like to see some fossils from Venus.