The History of Venus

The history of observations of Venus dates back to the earliest human observations. When Galileo Galilei turned his telescope towards Venus, he found that it exhibited phases just like the moon did. Transits of Venus tend to occur in pairs a few years apart from each other with gaps of over a century between the pairs. There will not be another transit of Venus until 2117 and 2125. In 1761 Mikhail Lamanasov discovered something that proved to become Venus's defining characteristic: It had an atmosphere. The rotation of Venus was an open question for a long time because nobody could see the surface. Astronomers were able to eventually discern some of Venus's secrets in the 20th century by observing

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