The North Star is perhaps one of the most famous stars in the sky. In popularity it is second only to the Sun, and of the night luminaries it is certainly the most famous. It is not surprising that many people consider it to be something special, standing out either in size or brightness, and endow it in their imagination with various qualities that are not inherent to it at all. So the North Star is surrounded by many myths and misconceptions. And if these misconceptions are not dispelled, in a situation where you need to find it in the sky in order to get your bearings, all these myths can lead to mistakes. And for a lost person in the wild, such mistakes can be deadly.
So, let's dispel all the myths about the North Star.
Myth 1. The North Star and Venus are the same thing
Most likely, this myth is associated with the apparent size of Venus: it appears larger and brighter compared to other luminaries of the night sky visible from Earth. Since, according to another myth, the North Star is the brightest star in the sky, seeing Venus, a person may think that since this object is the brightest, it means it is the North Star.
In fact, the North Star and Venus are completely different celestial bodies. Venus is a planet of the solar system, slightly smaller in size than the Earth, and the North Star is precisely a star whose radius is 30 times the radius of our Sun. The distance from Earth to Venus is on average 37.5 million times less than the distance to the North Star (on average - because the distance to Venus varies significantly due to the movement of the planets in orbit, but the minimum difference is 15 million times). The main thing is that in the sky these two luminaries are located in different places and are usually clearly visible. If you know how to find the North Star and know where Venus is in the sky in a particular area at a particular time of year, you can find both of them and be convinced that they are two different celestial bodies.
A situation that can be observed in the western part of Russia in winter - both Venus and Kinosura are visible above the horizon at the same time
Note
A little less often, this misconception is found in another formulation: The North Star is a planet. This is also a myth: the North Star is just that, a star. Moreover, modern research shows that this is a whole system of three stars, which today have even been photographed using powerful telescopes. Therefore, calling it a planet is completely wrong.
A telescope shot of the North Star: two companion stars are visible, which merge into one to the naked eye.
Fact: The North Star and Venus are not the same thing, but completely different celestial objects.
And since we’re talking about brightness, let’s remember another common myth...
Myth 2. Polaris is the brightest star in the sky
Polaris is far from the brightest star in the night sky. The brightest star in the visible spectrum is Sirius from the constellation Canis Major, several other stars in the night sky are brighter than Polaris, which often leads to orientation errors for beginners: they go to the brightest star, considering it Polaris, and deviate from the north directions.
By the way, this is where the legs of another myth “grow”: Sirius is the North Star. This is also a gross mistake: Sirius has nothing to do with polarissima. Sirius is located in the constellation Canis Major, the North Star is in the constellation Ursa Minor, and the distance between these stars is always significant. Sirius is not the North Star, never has been and never will be.
Also a typical winter picture of the starry sky with Kinosura and Sirius
The name of the true northern Pole Star is Kinosura.
Note
For the same reason, there is a common (albeit to a lesser extent) misconception that Vega is the North Star. Vega is also a bright star, its brightness is greater than the brightness of Polaris. However, this is a completely different luminary that has nothing to do with Kinosura.
Fact: Polaris is not the brightest star in the night sky. The brightness of many stars is significantly greater, and therefore looking for the brightest star to orient yourself is dangerous due to the possibility of error.
And again, from one myth the following follows: since we have already said about the constellations, let us remember the common misconception about the location of the North Star.
Myth 3. The North Star is located in the constellation Ursa Major
The North Star is located in the constellation Ursa Minor, but due to the weak brightness of other stars in this constellation, in many cases (especially in populated areas), except for the North Star itself, none of the other stars in this constellation are visible. At the same time, next to it there is a clearly visible and recognizable constellation Ursa Major with several bright luminaries. Due to this, by the way, it is according to the constellation Ursa Major that Kinosura is most often found in the sky. It is not surprising that, without going into details, many people tend to classify the North Star as the Big Dipper. This is actually a mistake: Polaris is the brightest star (alpha).
Fact: The North Star is located in the constellation Ursa Minor, and Ursa Major is only used to locate it.
Myth 4. The North Star is visible from anywhere on the planet
The North Star is visible only from the northern hemisphere, unless weather conditions, terrain and other factors interfere with this, and in the northern hemisphere it can be seen from almost any place with an open starry sky. visible only near the equator (up to 85 km), either in reflection in the atmosphere due to the phenomenon of refraction, or when climbing mountains or from an airplane. It is not visible in the rest of the Southern Hemisphere.
The position of the North Star above the horizon at latitude 4 degrees north (Africa). Even here the star barely appears above the horizon, despite the fact that this is already the northern hemisphere.
This myth is due to the fact that historically the North Star was considered as the main guiding, navigational celestial body. A person who is poorly versed in the matter may decide that since ancient times, people could only use a luminary that could be seen from everywhere as such a guiding star.
Indeed, in the ancient world, where the North Star had already acquired the status of the main navigation star, it was visible from everywhere, at least because ancient developed civilizations were concentrated in the northern hemisphere and people here always saw it. And the subsequent discovery of lands south of the equator, where Kinosura is hidden behind the horizon, could no longer change attitudes towards it.
Fact: The North Star is visible from anywhere in the northern hemisphere of the planet. It is not visible on the southern half of the planet.
Myth 5. The North Star points south
The polar star from the constellation Ursa Minor points north. In the southern hemisphere, its own polarissima, Sigma of the Octantus constellation, points strictly south, but it is much inferior in brightness to Kinosura, therefore it is rarely used in navigation and is not so popular. In fact, it is rarely even called the North Star. When we talk about the North Star, we usually mean North Polarissima, which points due north.
Note
In general, it is incorrect to say that this or that star is located in the south or north. South and north are directions that are relevant only on planet Earth. Any celestial bodies are located outside the Earth, and very far from it, and saying, for example, that the North Star is in the south is the same as, say, a beetle figuring out which side of the tree the beach is on.
Fact: The most famous North Star points north. Polarissima in the southern hemisphere points south, but is much less commonly called the South Pole Star.
The second planet from the Sun is Venus. Unlike Mercury, it is very easy to find in the sky. Everyone has noticed how sometimes in the evening the sky lights up in a still very bright sky. evening star". As the dawn fades, Venus becomes brighter and brighter, and when it gets completely dark and many stars appear, it stands out sharply among them. But Venus does not shine for long. An hour or two passes and she comes in. She never appears in the middle of the night, but there is a time when she can be seen in the morning, before dawn, in the role of "morning star" It’s already dawn, all the stars have long since disappeared, and the beautiful Venus is shining and shining against the bright background of the morning dawn.
People have known Venus since time immemorial. Many legends and beliefs were associated with it. In ancient times they thought that these were two different luminaries: one appears in the evenings, the other in the mornings. Then they realized that it was the same luminary, the beauty of the sky, " evening and morning starEvening star"has been sung more than once by poets and composers, described in the works of great writers, and depicted in paintings by famous artists.
In terms of brilliance, Venus is the third luminary of the sky, if the Sun is considered first, and the Moon second.. It is not surprising that it can sometimes be seen during the day - in the form of a white dot in the sky.
Venus's orbit lies inside the Earth's orbit, and it circles the Sun in 224 days, or 7.5 months. The fact that Venus is closer to the Sun than the Earth is the reason for the peculiarities of its visibility. Like Mercury, Venus can only move away from the Sun to a certain distance, which does not exceed 46?. Therefore, it sets no later than 3 - 4 hours after sunset, and rises no earlier than 4 hours before morning. Even with the weakest telescope it is clear that Venus is not a point, but a ball, one side of which is illuminated by the Sun, while the other is immersed in darkness.
Watching Venus day after day, you will notice that it, like the Moon and Mercury, goes through the entire change of phases.
Venus is usually easy to see with field binoculars. There are people with such acute vision that they can see the crescent of Venus even with the naked eye. This happens for two reasons: firstly, Venus is relatively large, it is only slightly smaller than the globe; secondly, in certain positions it comes close to the Earth, so that the distance to it decreases from 259 to 40 million km. This is the closest large celestial body to us after the Moon.
In a telescope, Venus appears very large, much larger than the Moon to the naked eye. It would seem that you can see a lot of different details on it, for example mountains, valleys, seas, rivers. Actually this is not true. No matter how many times astronomers looked at Venus, they were always disappointed. The visible surface of this planet is always white, monotonous, and nothing is visible on it except vague dim spots. Why is this so? The answer to this question was given by the great Russian scientist M.V. Lomonosov.
Venus is closer to the Sun than Earth. Therefore, sometimes it passes between the Earth and the Sun, and then it can be seen against the background of the dazzling solar disk in the form of a black dot. True, this happens very rarely. The last time Venus passed in front of the Sun was in 1882, and the next time it will be in 2004. The passage of Venus in front of the Sun in 1761 was observed by M. V. Lomonosov, among many other scientists. Carefully watching through a telescope how the dark circle of Venus appears against the fiery background of the solar surface, he noticed a new phenomenon, previously unknown to anyone. When Venus covered the disk of the Sun more than half its diameter, a fiery rim, as thin as hair, suddenly appeared around the rest of the globe of Venus, which was still against the dark background of the sky. The same thing was visible when Venus left the solar disk. Lomonosov came to the conclusion that it was all about the atmosphere - the layer of gas that surrounds Venus. In this gas, the sun's rays are refracted, bend around the opaque globe of the planet and appear to the observer in the form of a fiery rim. Summing up his observations, Lomonosov wrote: “The planet Venus is surrounded by a noble air atmosphere...”
This was a very important scientific discovery. Copernicus proved that the planets are similar to the Earth in their motion. Galileo's first observations through a telescope established that the planets are dark, cold balls on which there is day and night. Lomonosov proved that on planets, as on Earth, there can be an ocean of air - an atmosphere.
The air ocean of Venus differs in many ways from our earthly atmosphere. We have cloudy days, when a continuous opaque cover of clouds floats in the air, but there are also clear weather, when the Sun shines through the transparent air during the day, and thousands of stars are visible at night. It's always cloudy on Venus. Its atmosphere is always covered with white cloud cover. This is what we see when we look at Venus through a telescope.
The solid surface of the planet turns out to be inaccessible for observation: it is hidden behind a dense cloudy atmosphere.
And what is under this cloud cover, on the very surface of Venus? Are there continents, seas, oceans, mountains, rivers? We don't know this yet. Cloud cover makes it impossible to spot any features on the planet's surface and figure out how quickly they are moving due to the planet's rotation. Therefore, we do not know at what speed Venus rotates around its axis. About this planet we can only say that it is very warm, much warmer than on Earth, because it is closer to the Sun. It has also been established that there is a lot of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Venus. As for the rest, only future researchers will be able to tell about it.
The second planet from the Sun is Venus. In contrast to Mercury, it is very easy to find in the sky. Everyone has noticed how sometimes in the evening an “evening star” lights up in a still very bright sky. As the dawn fades, Venus becomes brighter and brighter, and when it gets completely dark and many stars appear, it stands out sharply among them. But Venus does not shine for long. An hour or two passes and she comes in. She never appears in the middle of the night, but there is a time when she can be seen in the morning, before dawn, in the role of the “morning star.” It’s already dawn, all the stars have long since disappeared, and the beautiful Venus is shining and shining against the bright background of the morning dawn.
People have known Venus since time immemorial. Many legends and beliefs were associated with it. In ancient times they thought that these were two different luminaries: one appears in the evenings, the other in the mornings. Then they realized that this was one and the same luminary, the beauty of the sky, the “evening and morning star” - Venus. The “Evening Star” has been sung more than once by poets and composers, described in the works of great writers, and depicted in paintings by famous artists.
In terms of brilliance, Venus is the third luminary of the sky, if the Sun is considered first, and the Moon second. It is not surprising that it can sometimes be seen during the day - in the form of a white dot in the sky.
Venus's orbit lies inside the Earth's orbit, and it circles the Sun in 224 days, or 7.5 months. The fact that Venus is closer to the Sun than the Earth is the reason for the peculiarities of its visibility. Like Mercury, Venus can only move away from the Sun a certain distance, which does not exceed 46°. Therefore, it sets no later than 3 - 4 hours after sunset, and rises no earlier than 4 hours before morning. Even with the weakest telescope it is clear that Venus is not a point, but a ball, one side of which is illuminated by the Sun, while the other is immersed in darkness.
Watching Venus day after day, you will notice that it, like the Moon and Mercury, goes through the entire change of phases.
Venus is usually easy to see with field binoculars. There are people with such acute vision that they can see the crescent of Venus even with the naked eye. This happens for two reasons: firstly, Venus is relatively large, it is only slightly smaller than the globe; secondly, in certain positions it comes close to the Earth, so that the distance to it decreases from 259 to 40 million km. This is the closest large celestial body to us after the Moon.
In a telescope, Venus appears very large, much larger than the Moon to the naked eye. It would seem that you can see a lot of different details on it, for example mountains, valleys, seas, rivers. Actually this is not true. No matter how many times astronomers looked at Venus, they were always disappointed. The visible surface of this planet is always white, monotonous, and nothing is visible on it except vague dim spots. Why is this so? The answer to this question was given by the great Russian scientist M.V. Lomonosov.
Venus is closer to the Sun than Earth. Therefore, sometimes it passes between the Earth and the Sun, and then it can be seen against the background of the dazzling solar disk in the form of a black dot. True, this happens very rarely. The last time Venus passed in front of the Sun was in 1882, and the next time it will be in 2004. The passage of Venus in front of the Sun in 1761 was observed by M. V. Lomonosov, among many other scientists. Carefully watching through a telescope how the dark circle of Venus appears against the fiery background of the solar surface, he noticed a new phenomenon, previously unknown to anyone. When Venus covered the disk of the Sun more than half its diameter, a fiery rim, as thin as hair, suddenly appeared around the rest of the globe of Venus, which was still against the dark background of the sky. The same thing was visible when Venus left the solar disk. Lomonosov came to the conclusion that it was all about the atmosphere - the layer of gas that surrounds Venus. In this gas, the sun's rays are refracted, bend around the opaque globe of the planet and appear to the observer in the form of a fiery rim. Summing up his observations, Lomonosov wrote: “The planet Venus is surrounded by a noble air atmosphere...”
This was a very important scientific discovery. Copernicus proved that the planets are similar to the Earth in their motion. Galileo's first observations through a telescope established that the planets are dark, cold balls on which there is day and night. Lomonosov proved that on planets, as on Earth, there can be an ocean of air - an atmosphere.
The air ocean of Venus differs in many ways from our earthly atmosphere. We have cloudy days, when a continuous opaque cover of clouds floats in the air, but there are also clear weather, when the Sun shines through the transparent air during the day, and thousands of stars are visible at night. It's always cloudy on Venus. Its atmosphere is always covered with white cloud cover. This is what we see when we look at Venus through a telescope.
The solid surface of the planet turns out to be inaccessible for observation: it is hidden behind a dense cloudy atmosphere.
And what is under this cloud cover, on the very surface of Venus? Are there continents, seas, oceans, mountains, rivers? We don't know this yet. Cloud cover makes it impossible to spot any features on the planet's surface and figure out how quickly they are moving due to the planet's rotation. Therefore, we do not know at what speed Venus rotates around its axis. About this planet we can only say that it is very warm, much warmer than on Earth, because it is closer to the Sun. It has also been established that there is a lot of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Venus. As for the rest, only future researchers will be able to tell about it.
The planet Venus is one of our closest neighbors. Only the Moon is closer to us (excluding, of course, artificial Earth satellites launched in the last few years). Venus is visible as a very bright celestial object.
This planet is especially interesting because in many respects it is an almost exact twin of our Earth. Venus is about the same size and mass as Earth, so there is reason to expect similar physical conditions on both planets. Unfortunately, we cannot directly observe the surface of Venus, because its atmosphere is an insurmountable barrier for our telescopes. Therefore, our knowledge about Venus is much more limited than about Mars, although the latter is further from us and smaller in size. In this book, I hope to summarize the results that astronomers have been able to accumulate and indicate possible directions for further research. Venus is a mysterious world, but it seems that our attempts to explore it are finally taking off.
The solar system consists of one star - the Sun - and nine main stars, as well as a huge number of smaller celestial bodies. Planets do not have their own glow; they merely reflect the sun's rays and appear bright only because of their relative proximity. They revolve around the Sun in elliptical paths called orbits; the average distances of the planets from the Sun range from 58 million km for Mercury. In ancient times, however, they thought differently: the Earth was considered the center of the Universe, and the celestial bodies were considered deities.
Five planets - Mercury, Venus. Mars, Jupiter, Saturn - must have been known since prehistoric times, and even in ancient times it was noted that although the planets look like stars, they behave completely differently. Real stars appear motionless on the celestial sphere and participate only in its daily rotation, so that the Chaldean shepherd astronomers thousands of years ago saw the same outlines of the constellations as we do. The planets Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, on the contrary, wander among the stars within a certain belt in the sky, known as the Zodiac. Mercury and Venus also move in this belt, but at the same time follow the Sun as it moves among the stars (which gave reason to consider them to be closer to us than the Sun).
Venus, the brightest luminary after the Sun and Moon, is never visible in the sky throughout the night. Either it sets as an evening star a few hours after the Sun, or as a morning star it appears shortly before sunrise. At one time it was believed that the morning and evening stars were different celestial bodies, and not the same planet. In Egypt, for example, the evening star was known as Owhaiti, and the morning star as Thiomuthiri; however, in China she was called by one name, Tai-pi, or White-faced Beauty.
The Babylonians called Venus Ishtar (the personification of woman and mother of the gods) and described her as “the bright torch of heaven.” Temples were erected in her honor in Nineveh and many other places. It was believed that Ishtar sent abundance to people. An ancient legend says that when Ishtar went to the kingdom of the dead to find her deceased lover Tammuz, all life on Earth began to fade away and was saved only thanks to the intervention of the gods, who resurrected Tammuz and thereby returned Igatar to the living. The analogy with the ancient legend of Demeter and Persephone is obvious.
The association of the planet with a woman took place among all peoples, except, perhaps, the Indians. This is quite natural, since to an earthly observer Venus appears to be the most beautiful of the planets. The Greeks and Romans gave the name to the goddess of beauty, and temples of Venus were erected in many places, such as Cyprus and Sicily. The month of April was dedicated to the goddess. In fact, the cult of Venus persisted until very recently. Williamson testifies that back in the 19th century. and Polynesia offered human sacrifices to the Morning Star; Sacrifices were also performed by the Skydy Pawnee Indians in Nebraska. It takes many years for ancient beliefs to fade away.
Homer also mentioned Venus: “Hesperus is the most beautiful of the stars of heaven.” The oldest surviving records of observations of the planet appear to have been made in Babylon. However, astronomy only firmly established itself as a science in ancient times. It became known that the Earth is not a plane, but a sphere, and other planets are also spheres. If the Greeks had taken one more step and overthrown our planet from its throne of honor at the center of the Universe, it seems that the progress of mankind would have accelerated. Some philosophers and scientists, most notably Aristarchus of Samos, did this, but their ideas contradicted religious tenets, and subsequently the ancient Greeks returned to geocentrism.
The ancient Greek system of the world received its highest development in the works of Hipparchus and Ptolemy. Claudius Ptolemy, who died around 180 AD, left us a work (“Almagest.”—Ed.), which reflected the level of knowledge during the decline of ancient culture. This system is known as the "Ptolemaic system", although, in fact, Ptolemy was not its main author.
According to these ideas, the Earth is at the center of the Universe, and various celestial bodies revolve around it in “perfect” circular orbits. Lupa is closest to all other bodies to the Earth, then Mercury, Venus and the Sun, followed by the other three planets known at that time - Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and, finally, the stars.
Already in the time of Ptolemy, it was obvious that such a system of the universe faced significant difficulties. For example, the planets do not continuously move among the stars from west to east: Mars, Jupiter and Saturn can stop for several days, then go back, making a “retrograde” movement, and then again begin to move in the same direction - to the east. To get rid of this difficulty, Ptolemy, who was an excellent mathematician, proposed that the planet moves in a small circle, or "epicycle", the center of which in turn revolves around the Earth in a large circle - the "deferent". The possibility that planets could move in elliptical orbits was not allowed. Movement in a circle was considered the most perfect form of movement, and nothing but absolutely perfect, of course, could happen in heaven.
New problems arose for Mercury and Venus, and Ptolemy was forced to assume that the centers of their epicycles were constantly in a straight line with the Sun and Earth. This at least explained why both planets never appear on the opposite side of the sky from the Sun. However, the whole system turned out to be too artificial and cumbersome.
At the beginning of the 17th century. The telescope was invented, and in 1609 Galileo Galilei, a professor of mathematics in Padua, pointed the instrument he had just made to the sky for the first time. The scientist immediately saw that his expectations were more than justified. High mountains and huge craters were visible on the Moon; there were spots on the Sun; four of its own moons were circling around Jupiter, and Saturn looked somehow strange, although Galileo could not figure out what was going on there, and the Milky Way turned out to be a huge mass of faint stars.
Galileo himself was an ardent supporter of the heliocentric world system, which had been resurrected and developed by Copernicus some 60 years earlier. Galileo looked for evidence of the validity of this system and found it, oddly enough, by observing the phases of Venus. Yes, Venus did exhibit phases, but they turned out to be of the same type as those of the Moon: sometimes the planet was observed in the form of a crescent, and sometimes as an almost complete disk.
Galileo's discoveries were met with a storm of indignation. The princes of the church objected vehemently; The story of Galileo's arrest, trial and forced abdication is well known. Many of his contemporaries refused to believe what they saw through telescopes, and Galileo did not live to fully admit that he was right.
Kepler also followed the right path. His research, based on the precise observations of the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, allowed the scientist to derive the famous laws of planetary motion that bear the name of Kepler. The first of these laws states that each planet revolves around the Sun in an ellipse, at one of the foci of which the Sun itself is located; the movement of Venus, as I expected, obeyed this law. At the very end of the century, Isaac Newton's work on the problem of universal gravitation finally clarified the whole picture. Since then, the Ptolemaic system and other geocentric systems have become a thing of the past.
The discovery of the phases of Venus helped open the door to knowledge; the path forward seemed clear.
It is very easy to find it in the sky. Everyone has noticed how sometimes in the evening an “evening star” lights up in a still very bright sky. As the dawn fades, Venus becomes brighter and brighter, and when it gets completely dark and other stars appear, it stands out sharply among them. But Venus does not shine for long. An hour or two passes and she comes in. She never appears in the middle of the night, but there is a time when she can be seen in the morning, before dawn, in the role of the “morning star.” It is already dawn, all the other stars have long since disappeared, and Venus continues to shine and shine against the bright background of the morning dawn.
People have known Venus since time immemorial. Many legends and beliefs were associated with it. In ancient times they thought that these were two different luminaries: one appears in the evenings, the other in the mornings. Then they realized that this was the same luminary, the beauty of the sky, the “evening and morning star” - Venus. The “Evening Star” has been sung more than once by poets and composers, described in the works of great writers, and depicted in paintings by famous artists.
In terms of brilliance, Venus is the third luminary of the sky, if the Sun is considered first, and . It is not surprising that it can sometimes be seen during the day - in the form of a white dot in the sky.
Venus's orbit lies inside the Earth's orbit, and it circles the Sun in 224 days, or 7 ½ months. The fact that Venus is closer to the Sun than the Earth is the reason for the peculiarities of its visibility. Like Mercury, Venus can only move away from the Sun a certain distance, which does not exceed 46°. Therefore, it sets no later than 3-4 hours after sunset, and rises no earlier than 3-4 hours before morning.
Even with the weakest telescope it is clear that Venus is not a point, but a ball, one side of which is illuminated by the Sun, while the other is immersed in darkness.
Watching Venus day after day, you will notice that she, like Moon Mercury, goes through all the changes of phases.
Venus is usually easy to see with field binoculars. There are people with such acute vision that they can see the crescent of Venus even with the naked eye. This happens for two reasons: firstly, Venus is relatively large, it is only slightly smaller than the globe; secondly, in certain positions it comes close to the Earth, so that the distance to it decreases from 259 to 40 million km. This is the closest large celestial body to us after the Moon.
In a telescope, Venus appears very large, much larger than the Moon to the naked eye. It would seem that you can see a lot of different details on it, for example mountains, valleys, seas, rivers. Actually this is not true. No matter how many times astronomers looked at Venus, they were always disappointed. The visible surface of this planet is always white, monotonous, and nothing is visible on it except vague dim spots. Why is this so? The answer to this question was given by the great Russian scientist M.V. Lomonosov.
Venus is closer to the Sun than Earth. Therefore, sometimes it passes between the Earth and the Sun, and then it can be seen against the background of the dazzling solar disk in the form of a black dot. True, this happens very rarely. The last time Venus passed the Sun was in 1882, and the next time it will be in 2004.
The passage of Venus in front of the Sun in 1761 was observed, among many other scientists, by M. V. Lomonosov. Carefully watching through a telescope how the dark circle of Venus appears against the fiery background of the solar surface, he noticed a new phenomenon, previously unknown to anyone. When Venus covered the disk of the Sun by more than half of its diameter, a fiery rim, as thin as hair, suddenly appeared around the rest of the ball of Venus, which was still against the dark background of the sky. The same thing was visible when Venus left the solar disk. came to the conclusion that it was all about the atmosphere - the layer of gas that surrounds Venus. In this gas, the sun's rays are refracted, bend around the opaque globe of the planet and appear to the observer in the form of a fiery rim. Summing up his observations, Lomonosov wrote: “The planet Venus is surrounded by a noble air atmosphere...”
This was a very important scientific discovery. proved that the planets are similar to the Earth in their motion. With his first observations through a telescope, he established that the planets are dark, cold balls on which there is day and night. Lomonosov proved that on planets, as on Earth, there can be an ocean of air - an atmosphere.
The air ocean of Venus differs in many ways from our earthly atmosphere. We have cloudy days, when a continuous opaque cover of clouds floats in the air, but there are also clear weather, when the Sun shines through the transparent air during the day, and thousands of stars are visible at night. It's always cloudy on Venus. Its atmosphere is always covered with white cloud cover. This is what we see when we look at Venus through a telescope.
The solid surface of the planet turns out to be inaccessible for observation: it is hidden behind a dense cloudy atmosphere.
And what is under this cloud cover, on the very surface of Venus? Are there continents, seas, oceans, mountains, rivers? We don't know this yet. Cloud cover makes it impossible to spot any features on the planet's surface and figure out how quickly they are moving due to the planet's rotation. Therefore, we do not know at what speed Venus rotates around its axis. About this planet we can only say that it is very warm, much warmer than on Earth, because it is closer to the Sun. It has also been established that there is a lot of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Venus. As for the rest, only future researchers will be able to tell about it.
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