Venus Speed Of Rotation Changes Due To Mountain Waves

Special About Venus

Venus named as the morning star or evening star as it is the brightest planet seen from the Earth. Venus is known for its high surface temperature up to 800 deg.F due to greenhouse gas effect making its atmosphere toxic. Scientists had said that the dark spots on its atmosphere indicate the existence of extraterrestrial bacteria. This is one among the mysteries of Venus.

Venus Rotational Speed

Unlike other planets that rotate in an anti-clockwise direction, Venus rotates clockwise in retrograde motion. According to recent study reports on Venus, the rotational speed of the planet is raising up slowly. Venus normally takes about 243 days to complete a single revolution and its rotation speed varies and scientists were not able to find a concrete reason for its speed change.

Akatsuki spacecraft Images

In connection to this, the recent research study on the images obtained from the Akatsuki spacecraft of Japanese Space agency showed some reasons behind this concept of rotational speed variations in Venus. An image showed a Bow shaped structure over its surface and upon analysis, it was appearing and disappearing again and again.

Mountain waves

Finally, it was found to be a mountain wave that was formed by mountain and reasoned it as the change for its speed. Bow shape indicated its direction over the surface that consists of mountains and volcanos.

As an outcome, Researchers say that Venus's atmosphere whose speed is rising up slowly keeps on interacting with the Venus' surface with a force and thus changing the planet's spinning speed and finally making an impact on the length of a day in Venus (116 days 18 hours) and they also added that since the planet's surface is covered by its thick atmosphere, the landscape characteristics of Venus could not be analysed deeper.