Venus

Venus
Political Specifications
Designation
Affiliation	unaligned
Location	Sol system
Sector	001
Quadrant	Alpha/Beta
World Status
Orbital Characteristics
Physical Characteristics
Class	N
Population Data
Dominant Lifeform

Astronomical Data

Names

• Sol II
• Venus
• Shukra

History

Venus was known in the Hindu Jyotisha since early times as the planet Shukra. In the West, before the advent of the telescope, Venus was known only as a 'wandering star'. Several cultures historically held its appearances as a morning and evening star to be those of two separate bodies. Pythagoras is usually credited with recognizing in the sixth century BC that the morning and evening stars were a single body, though he thought that Venus orbited the Earth. When Galileo first observed the planet in the early 17th century, he found that it showed phases like Luna's, varying from crescent to gibbous to full and vice versa. This could be possible only if Venus orbited Sol, and this was among the first observations to clearly contradict the Ptolemaic geocentric model that the solar system was concentric and centered on the Earth.

Venus's atmosphere was discovered as early as 1790 by Johann Schröter. Schröter found that when the planet was a thin crescent, the cusps extended through more than 180°. He correctly surmised that this was due to scattering of sunlight in a dense atmosphere. Later, Chester Smith Lyman observed a complete ring around the dark side of the planet when it was at inferior conjunction, providing further evidence for an atmosphere.

Important Locations

• None