dipper@utastro.UUCP (12/16/84)
Venus is now the brightest thing in the west after sunset. More on how to see Venus -- when we come back. December 16 Venus You can't miss Venus around now because it's the brightest thing in the west each evening -- a brilliant object that people will call "the evening star" even though it's a planet. Venus is now rapidly gaining on Earth in the race around the sun. It'll soon catch up -- to be between the Earth and sun in early April. We've been talking these past few days about early spacecraft missions to Venus -- but as you stand there looking at the planet, you might think about some spacecraft that are orbiting Venus even now. One is a NASA craft, the Pioneer Venus Orbiter, which has circled our sister world since 1978. This craft used radar to penetrate the planet's thick clouds. It enabled scientists on Earth to make the amazing map of Venus that shows highlands and lowlands on its surface. Pioneer Venus is still sending back data on the atmosphere of Venus. What's more, in 1986, it'll be turned to get a look at Halley's Comet, when that famous visitor is near perihelion, its closest point to the sun. Two Soviet craft are also orbiting Venus now and have been since last fall. The Veneras 15 and 16 produced even higher-resolution radar images of smaller features on the surface of Venus -- including some that looked very much like volcanoes. Many scientists now believe that volcanoes sometimes erupt beneath the shroud of Venusian clouds. But confirmation of volcanic activity on Venus may have to wait for an even more advanced spacecraft -- NASA's planned Venus Radar Mapper, scheduled for a 1988 launch. Script by Deborah Byrd. (c) Copyright 1983, 1984 McDonald Observatory, University of Texas at Austin