Walking home yesterday, I could see a beautiful crescent moon and Venus. Bewitching over the chimneys of Canonmills and Stockbridge, Edinburgh.

(I forgot to post this yesterday!)

#moon #Venus #Edinburgh #photography

...
It is unlikely that it will be possible to explore even the nearest exoplanets with the help of automatic spacecraft in the current century. It is quite possible, however, that the answer will be found very close, on our closest neighbor in the solar system - on Venus. The surface temperature of the planet (735 K, or 462°C) and the enormous pressure (87–90 atm) of its gas envelope with a density of 65 kg/m3, consisting mainly of carbon dioxide (96.5%), nitrogen (3.5%), and traces of oxygen (less than 2·10–5%), are close to the physical conditions on many exoplanets of a special class.



Recently, television images (panoramas) of the surface of Venus, obtained thirty years ago or more, have been re-examined and processed. They found several objects ranging in size from a decimeter to half a meter, which changed shape, position in the frame, appeared in some images and disappeared in others. And on a number of panoramas, precipitation was clearly observed, which fell and melted on the surface of the planet.
...

#science #cosmos #space #venus #life #history #USSR