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- Venus is the planet of pleasure and love, governing your capacity for
- love, your ability to appreciate beauty, your social grace, and your
- friendships. Expressed in its positive form, Venus endows a person with
- sex appeal, charm, amiability, an appreciation of the arts, and an eye
- for beauty. Venus's influence manifests itself through romance, great
- art and music, and loving and sharing with others.
- If Venus is afflicted (at odds with another planet in your horoscope),
- Venus's influence instills decadence, narcissism, and laziness.
- Since Venus is so close to the Sun (from earth's vantage point), it
- always lies within two signs (before or after) of your Sun sign.
-
- Venus is the second planet in distance from the Sun and is the
- brightest object in the sky (except for the Sun and Moon, of course).
- It is called the morning star when it shines in the eastern dawn sky
- and it is called the evening star when it shines in the western sky
- at sunset. Because of its relatively close proximity to the Sun, Venus
- is never visible for more than three hours before sunrise or three
- hours after sunset.
- Venus's dense atmosphere and complete cloud cover make it impossible
- to see the surface of the planet from earth. Its atmosphere is almost
- entirely composed of carbon dioxide and its clouds are concentrated
- sulfuric acid. Its surface temperature is a uniform and inhospitable
- 459 degrees Celsius. The Pioneer Venus 1 spacecraft conducted a radar
- mapping of the surface, revealing a relatively flat plain surrounding
- two continent-sized highland areas which have been named Aphrodite
- Terra and Ishtar Terra after two symbolic manifestations of the goddess
- Venus. The Magellan spacecraft has discovered large active volcanoes
- and lava flows, as well as extensive meteorite craters.
- Venus completes its orbit around the Sun every 226 days and has a
- mass which is 82 percent that of earth. It has no known satellites (or
- moons).
-
- In Roman mythology, Venus was originally a goddess of fields and
- gardens but later became identified with the Greek goddess of love and
- beauty, Aphrodite. Venus was the wife of Vulcan but was unfaithful to
- him many times. Among her lovers were the shepherd Adonis, the god of
- war, Mars, and Anchises, the father of Aeneas. Venus gave birth to the
- god of love, Cupid.
-