Why is Venus red?

Question

Mars is red and Venus. But why?

Answer 1

Venus is always covered by a thick, dens layer of gleaming white clouds. The first space probes to fly through them revealedthat they are made out of carbon dioxide plus tiny dropletsof sulfuric acid.

The atmosphere of Venus consists 97% of carbon dioxide and 3% of nitrogen, with small amounts of sulfur dioxide, argon, carbon monoxide, and oxygen.

Answer 2

Mars is often called the 'Red Planet' because it appears in the sky as an orange-red star. however at times venus does appear red due to this;

Venus has an extremely thick atmosphere, which consists mainly of carbon dioxide and a small amount of nitrogen. The pressure at the planet's surface about 90 times that at Earth's surface—a pressure equivalent to that at a depth of 1 kilometer under Earth's oceans. The enormously CO2-rich atmosphere generates a strong greenhouse effect that raises the surface temperature to over 400 °C. This makes Venus' surface hotter than Mercury's, even though Venus is nearly twice as distant from the Sun and receives only 25% of the solar irradiance.

Answer 3

For the same reason the setting sun is red: slanting through the atmosphere at the "sunset" angle absorbs the blue (shorter) wavelengths from the spectrum. Well, that and the smog makes it look red-brown.

And because Venus is between the Earth and the Sun, we see Venus near sunrise or sunset, fairly low on the horizon. So you're ALWAYS seeing Venus at sunrise/sunset conditions.

Mars, of course, shines red because the surface of the planet is mostly hematite (go Spirit and Opportunity!). And the "anti-Mars," the star Antares in the constellation Scorpio, shines red because that's the color of the light the star produces. (If memory serves, this is because it's farther along in the stellar lifecycle and most of its energy comes from the fusion of helium rather than hydrogen, which makes a bigger star that produces red light. But it's been thirty years since I studied main sequence stars.)

Answer 4

Most pictures of Venus have some sort of false color to bring out details. Astronomers do this a lot when they want to make certain features or information more obvious. If we looked at Venus with our eyes above the atmosphere, we would see a really bright white-yellowish ball with essentially no features. Some pictures of the atmosphere show dark sideways V-shaped bands. These pictures were taking in ultraviolet light to show some cloud patterns, so we wouldn't see it like that in reality.

If we traveled down through the atmosphere to the surface, we would probably see brownish-red colored rocks. The rocks are probably similar to volcanic rocks here on Earth, but the thick atmopshere blocks a lot of light making the surface kind of dim with a reddish tinge. The bright red/orange pictures of the surface that you see associated with the NASA Magellan project are probably more red than what you would see if you were actually there. For example, if you look at color picture of the surface, taken by a spacecrafts you can see it looks reddish. If you brought the rocks back to Earth light they would probably have a slightly different color, but they're reddish on Venus

Answer 5

I don't remember Venus being red, but it would be red for the same reason as Mars: rust.

Answer 6

Venus is bright due to the reflection of the sun on its thick atmosphere. I have not heard of Venus being referred to as red. If it appears red to you, perhaps there is an atmospheric factor affecting your view of it in your area. Mars appears red due to the iron oxide in the rocks and dust.

Answer 7

Mars Is red Owing To Iron in Its soil

Answer 8

Venus isn't actually red. If you saw pictures that show it in red, they are most likely false-color radar images of the surfaces - often shown in a reddish colour.

Only radar can view the surface because the cloud cover is much too dense to see through to the surface.

Answer 9

When did you see Venus red? It generally is not. The only possibility is if you oberved it when it was really close to your horizon. In that case, it appeared red for the same reason our sun or the moon sometimes looks red on our horizon...dust and other small particles in our atmosphere.

Answer 10

Because Venus likes to read.

Answer 11

mars is red by iron rust, so red will appear on the planet. venus is red by acid cloud, not like mars.