My Sister Venus

For beauty, my sister, art thou renown, Do lift up thine thick veil of secrecy, So prone to me, and still so little known, Ye know not how keen am I thee to see. Perplexed am I by thine strange little ways— Way ye rotate —we call here reverse gears, The way revolve— it fails not to amaze, Wonder, how days longer can be than years! I sure love to come, spend some time with thee, But wonder what I'd do with thine long night, Is it secret to thine beauty so bright? And still can't wait one day to come and see. Ye know this odd myth that men from Mars came? Come women from thine land, sharing thine name. ______________________________________________________ A poem for children, it sees Venus and Earth as sisters, Earth slightly elder. Venus is closest to Earth, but is covered with thick clouds of gas, and its terrain remains largely unknown. Its average temperature is +456.850 C. It rotates backwards from East to West so that the sun would appear to rise from the West and set in the East. The time Venus takes for one rotation round its axis is 243 Earth days. For one orbit around the sun it takes less at 224 days. So, her year is shorter than the day! In April 2006 the European Space Agency's Venus Express Spacecraft was sent. Japan's Venus Climate Orbiter Planet-C was launched in 2010. ______________________________________________________ Musings | 03.08.12 | Topic: star, planet