The Story of the Solar System

by George F. Chambers

Spots and shadings have on various occasions been noticed on Venus, and though it is not easy to harmonise the various accounts, there seems no doubt of the reality of the facts, or that they must be ascribed to the existence of mountains. Schröter found very much the same state of things to exist on Venus that he found on Mercury, and putting together what he saw he arrived at the conclusion that Venus possesses mountains of considerable height, and that his observations must be taken to imply that the planet revolved on its axis in rather more than 23 hours. This conclusion as regards the planet’s axial rotation was not first arrived at by Schröter, for the two Cassinis, one about 1666, and the other about 1740, both ascribed to Venus a rotation period of about 23 hours, an evaluation which was fully confirmed by Di Vico at Rome between 1839 and 1841, and by Flammarion in 1894.

What has been already said with respect to Mercury is true also of Venus, namely that it has been much neglected by modern observers; and accordingly an announcement made by Schiaparelli in 1890, that the rotation period of Venus is to be measured not by hours but by months, came upon the astronomical world as a startling revelation; but it is a revelation which has been keenly contested, and certainly awaits legal proof. Schiaparelli has not ventured to assert as he has done in the case of Mercury, that Venus’s rotation period is identical with the period of 7½ months in which it revolves round the Sun; he only claims this as a strong probability arising out of what he says he is certain of, namely that its period of rotation cannot be less than six months and may be as much as nine months. His assumption is that previous observers in endeavouring to ascertain Venus’s rotation period have used and relied upon evanescent shadings which probably were of atmospheric origin and scarcely recognisable from day to day, whereas he fixed his attention upon round defined white spots, which, whatever their origin, are so far permanent that their existence has been spoken of for two centuries. Miss Clarke thus puts the matter:—“His steady watch over them showed the invariability of their position with regard to the terminator; and this is as much as to say that the regions of day and night do not shift on the surface of the planet. In other words she keeps the same face always turned towards the Sun.”

Various recent observations, some of them made with the express object of throwing light upon Schiaparelli’s conclusions, are strangely contradictory. Perrotin at Nice in 1890 thought his observations confirmed Schiaparelli’s; on the other hand Niesten at Brussels considered that numerous drawings of Venus made by himself and Stuyvaert between 1881 and 1890 harmonised well with Di Vico’s rotation period of 23h. 21m. 22s.; which Trouvelot in 1892 only wished to increase to about 24 hours.

There is a general consensus of opinion that great irregularities exist on the surface of Venus. These are made specially manifest to us in connection with the terminator or visible edge of the planet seen as an illuminated crescent. If the planet had a smooth surface this line would at all times be a perfect and continuous curve, instead of which it is frequently to be noticed as a jagged or broken line. Observations to this effect go back as far as 1643, when Fontana at Naples observed this to be the condition of the terminator. La Hire, Schröter, Mädler, Di Vico and many others down to the present epoch have noted the same thing. The fact that the southern horn of Venus is constantly to be seen blunted is so well established as to admit of no doubt, and this blunting is commonly ascribed to the existence of a lofty mountain, to which Schröter ascribed a height of 27 miles. Whatever we may think as to the precise accuracy of this figure, it seems impossible to doubt the main fact on which it depends; whilst a Belgian observer, Van Ertborn, in 1876 repeatedly saw a point of light in this locality which he regarded as due to Sun-light impinging on a detached peak, adjacent valleys remaining in shadow. This effect is common enough in the case of the Moon, and is familiar to all who are in the habit of studying the Moon.

Fig. 9.—Venus, Dec. 23, 1885.

The existence on Venus of an atmosphere of considerable density and extent is well established. Proof of this is to be found in the marked diminution of the planet’s brilliancy towards the terminator; and in the faint curved line of light which occasionally may be seen when the planet is near inferior conjunction. When so situated, so much of the planet itself as can be seen illuminated shows as a narrow radiant crescent of light, ending off in two points called indifferently cusps or horns. It sometimes happens, however, that from the point of each cusp there runs round to the other cusp a faint continuation of the crescent, resulting in the general appearance of the planet being that of a nearly uniform ring of light. There is no known way in which the Sun can illuminate so much more than the half of Venus so as to permit of a perfect circle being visible except by supposing that an atmosphere exists on the planet and refracts (or transmits by bending, as it were, round the corner) a sufficient amount of Sun-light to give rise to the appearance in question. Further proof of the existence of an atmosphere on Venus is obtainable on those very rare occasions when the planet is seen passing across the disc of the Sun—a phenomenon known as a “Transit of Venus.” It then nearly always happens that a hazy nebulous ring of feeble light may be detected encompassing the planet’s disc indicative of course of the fact that the Sun’s rays are there slightly obstructed in reaching the eye of an observer on the Earth. Some observers scrutinising Venus when in transit have thought that they were able to obtain, by means of the spectroscope, traces of aqueous vapour on the planet, but the evidence of this does not appear to be altogether clear or conclusive.

Fig. 10.—Venus near conjunction as a thin crescent, Sept. 21, 1887 (Flammarion).

Everybody may be presumed to be acquainted with the spectacle popularly known as “The Old Moon in the New Moon’s Arms” whereby when the Moon is only about two or three days old and exhibits but a narrow crescent of bright light, yet the whole outline of the disc is traceable on the sky. A phenomenon analogous to this may often be seen in the case of Venus when near its inferior conjunction. With the Moon the cause is due to the reflection of Earth-light (so to speak) to the Moon, but that explanation seems inadequate in respect of Venus, because it is conceived that the amount of Earth-light available is altogether insufficient for the purpose. Many other explanations have been put forward including phosphorescence on the surface of Venus, electrical displays in the nature of terrestrial auroræ, and what not, but it must be frankly confessed that astronomers are all at sea on the subject.