Venus is Earth’s twisted twin in so some ways, what about on the skywatching entrance?
Alas, stargazing is not nice from the Venusian floor: The thick carbon-dioxide environment that blankets the planet means there isn’t any catching a break within the clouds. But above these clouds — the place, come to think about it, situations are reasonably much less deadly for human stargazers anyway — the view of the night time sky is perhaps fairly much like that on Earth.
A skywatching session on Venus would require being, say, 35 to 40 miles (55 to 60 kilometers) above the floor, the place the temperature and strain are surprisingly Earthlike, Paul Byrne, a planetary scientist at Washington University in St. Louis who focuses on Venus, advised Space.com.
“It is the only other place in the solar system where room temperature and pressure conditions are present and, potentially, an astronaut could stand on the railing of a gondola with a breathing apparatus on but otherwise in shirtsleeves,” he stated. Perhaps the celebs would twinkle a bit of in a different way or the environment would tinge meteors a unique coloration, however the gist can be the identical, he predicted.
Related: Amazing photos of Comet NEOWISE from the Earth and space
Let’s persist with meteor showers, since loads of skywatchers are contemporary off that terrestrial expertise, because of August’s gorgeous Perseid meteor shower.
As lengthy as you are above the clouds, Byrne stated, if the planet swings by the mandatory particles, a meteor shower ought to work kind of the identical means on Venus because it does on Earth. “At that point and above, presumably it would be similar to watching a meteor shower at sea level on Earth,” he stated. “I cannot think of any reasons why you would not see shooting star streaks as stuff burns up.”
The Perseids are attributable to Earth plowing by a path of dust shed by the Comet Swift-Tuttle. Comets are notoriously messy objects, the cosmic equal of Pig-Pen within the Peanuts comics, scattering dust wherever they go. And most meteor showers are attributable to the identical short-orbiting comet leaving a path of particles alongside the trail it takes, lap after lap by the solar system.
But there is a second, a lot rarer sort of meteor bathe that depends on only one move of a long-period comet, one which treks by the solar system on a path so lengthy the icy lump won’t ever retrace its steps throughout a human lifetime. Trickier is perhaps an understatement: Earthling skywatchers have by no means caught a meteor bathe attributable to contemporary particles from a long-period comet, at the least not in response to current data. Theoretically, for the reason that two planets orbit the sun at related distances, the identical lengthy odds maintain for Venus, regardless of the abysmal lack of skywatching data from that world.
But implausible doesn’t suggest inconceivable, and if this state of affairs have been ever to unfold in our lifetimes, one of the best likelihood of it occurring could come this December.
Meet Comet Leonard
In December, Venus and a long-period comet known as Comet C/2021 A1 (Leonard) will almost cross paths, with the planet crossing the comet’s particles path simply three days after the icy physique dashes by Venus on its first go to to the inside solar system in some 80,000 years.
“There’s a lot of unknowns here that could affect things a lot,” Qicheng Zhang, a planetary science graduate pupil at Caltech and lead writer of a brand new paper exploring the state of affairs, advised Space.com. “The chances aren’t particularly good for observing this event, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility and it wouldn’t be completely surprising if something ends up being observed.”
Zhang is fascinated by comets for his or her brightness and unpredictability, so each day he checks an inventory of newly found comet candidates to see what scientists have noticed. In January, he found an announcement for Comet Leonard, which instantly stood out to him.
“I’m serious about these comets that move pretty near the sun,” Zhang stated. “This one didn’t pass super close to the sun, but it still got closer than Earth’s orbit, which is more interesting than most comets that are discovered these days.” So, Zhang took a better take a look at Comet Leonard to see how its path aligned with the sun and the inner planets.
“The one thing that stood out was that the comet’s orbit and Venus’ orbit almost perfectly intersect,” Zhang stated. Their orbits come inside 31,000 miles (50,000 km), equal to the gap from Earth to the ring of geosynchronous satellites orbiting excessive above our heads. The our bodies themselves will come inside 2.7 million miles (4.3 million km) of one another on Dec. 18; the following day, Venus will cross the comet’s path three days behind the icy physique.
But Comet Leonard is making only one move and hasn’t constructed up such a transparent path of particles, so Zhang needed to find out whether or not its rubble is perhaps substantial sufficient to set off a meteor bathe on Venus come the December intersection — and, if it might, whether or not there was any risk people may by some means observe it.
The analysis is described in a paper posted on July 26 to the preprint server arXiv.org and submitted to the Astronomical Journal.
A Venusian meteor bathe?
According to Zhang and his colleagues’ calculations, essentially the most promising state of affairs for an observable meteor bathe as Venus intersects the comet’s path would require excessive ranges of exercise on the icy physique when it was on the very least 30 occasions the typical distance of Earth from the sun (or concerning the distance of Neptune), maybe extra like 100. That’s not inconceivable, however it’s uncommon, and would imply that Comet Leonard was coated in significantly unstable ices, susceptible to show to vapor below nonetheless fairly frigid situations.
For a show dramatic sufficient for scientists on Earth to identify the fireworks on Venus, in response to Zhang’s calculations, that exercise would wish to have begun at a distance from the sun extra like 500 and even 1,000 occasions that of Earth.
“That’s really far away, and well before the comet was discovered. We don’t know if the comet was actually even active at that distance,” he stated. “If we did have a positive detection of meteors on Venus from this event, it would tell us that this comet was quite active at high distances from the sun.”
And not a lot concerning the comet’s swing by the solar system itself can enhance the percentages. “The only thing that could possibly change or add meteors to the shower from now on is if there were to be a highly explosive outburst of the sort that very few comets in history have produced,” Zhang stated. “That’s not something that you would normally expect to see in a comet and would be highly unusual” — extra uncommon than recognizing meteors on Venus, even.
That means it is all unlikely — however nonetheless doable.
If Comet Leonard does set off a meteor bathe that people can handle to watch, it would not be the primary such information from past Earth.
In October 2014, a comet dubbed Siding Spring swung previous Mars, with the Red Planet plowing by the comet’s dust path about three hours later. The meteors fell on the aspect of Mars dealing with away from Earth, however NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft picked up the fleeting signature of magnesium that the comet particles dumped into the Red Planet’s higher environment.
Siding Spring’s encounter with Mars does not make for a straightforward comparability with this December’s potential fireworks at Venus. Comet Leonard won’t ever come as near Venus as its predecessor did to Mars, and Venus hosts just one orbiter, Japan’s Akatsuki spacecraft, in contrast to the 4 orbiters and two rovers that have been stationed on the Red Planet in 2014, according to NASA.
But Earth, Venus and the sun can be oriented such that observers on Earth might be able to catch faint flashes from Comet Leonard’s particles, Zhang famous, which was inconceivable throughout Comet Siding Spring’s encounter. “There was never a chance to see any Martian meteor shower from Earth,” he stated.
“Venus will be much closer to Earth than Mars was, and so there’s the possibility that maybe if there were something interesting,” — remarkably massive meteors born of cometary exercise at large distances from the sun, for instance — “that could potentially in theory be visible from Earth by fairly small, even advanced-amateur class telescopes,” he stated. (The Hubble Space Telescope will not be capable to try observations as a result of Venus can be too shut within the sky to the sun on the time.)
And though Zhang is not holding his breath for a powerful show, if the encounter does produce a spectacle, it may produce the identical kind of metallic traces in Venus’ environment as Comet Siding Spring did at Mars.
“Our uncertainties can’t rule out that there could be a very large meteor storm, a large impressive meteor storm the sort that would be needed to generate a meteor layer of the sort that appeared on Mars,” Zhang stated. “That’s still a possibility, but a much smaller possibility than a very small meteor shower.”
Once in a lifetime
Chances are, neither Comet Leonard nor some other could have an analogous alternative to make its mark on Venus inside our lifetimes.
Such shut cometary flybys of the inner planets are uncommon, Zhang famous. “Probably this event has a recurrence time scale frequency on the order of maybe once every few centuries or so per planet,” he stated. “It’s a fairly rare event, as far as comet close encounters go.”
And no matter occurs at Venus, Zhang stated, Comet Leonard is on its final move by the solar system. The sun’s warmth could shred the icy physique, a threat comets at all times take throughout their excursions.
If it does not, Zhang and his staff calculated that the remainder of the solar system will jostle the comet’s orbit sufficient that this time round, Comet Leonard will slip away from our neighborhood and find yourself stranded in interstellar space.
Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or observe her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
