Beautiful Venus

Venus is the second-closest planet to the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. The planet is named after Venus, the Roman goddess of love.

Venus reaches its maximum brightness shortly before sunrise or shortly after sunset, for which reason it is often called the Morning Star or the Evening Star.

Classified as a terrestrial planet, it is sometimes called Earth's "sister planet" because they are similar in size, gravity, and bulk composition. Venus is covered with an opaque layer of highly reflective clouds of sulfuric acid, preventing its surface from being seen from space in visible light.

As it moves around its orbit, Venus displays phases in a telescopic view like those of the Moon: In the phases of Venus the planet presents a small "full" image when it is on the opposite side of the Sun.

Above the dense CO2 layer are thick clouds consisting mainly of sulfur dioxide and sulfuric acid droplets. These clouds reflect about 60% of the sunlight that falls on them back into space, and prevent the direct observation of Venus's surface in visible light.

Venus is always brighter than the brightest stars, with its apparent magnitude ranging from −3.8 to −4.6.

The song is Angel by Drop Nineteens.

This clip was taken with a Panasonic MiniDV Palmcorder. It has a 30.5 -37 mm lens and 2.0x telephoto conversion with 1400x digital zoom.