Astronomy: Parting the Veil of Venus

Astronomers now believe that they have penetrated the veil of clouds enveloping that mysterious lady Venus. In the Astrophysical Journal, a pair of planet watchers using the equipment at Caltech's Owens Valley Radio Observatory announced that they have made what is probably the first direct observations of the planet's surface, and found it, as expected, dry and extremely hot. They measured temperatures up to a maximum of 675°F. at the equator and a minimum of 300° at the poles —far too hot for any known form of life.

How do they know they have studied Venus and not its veil? Dr. Barry Clark of the National Radio Observatory at Green Bank, W.Va., and Dr. Arkady Kuzmin of Moscow's Lebedev Institute of Physics explained that the thermal radiations they observed from Venus seemed to come from a solid surface. Moreover, Caltech's two big-dish antennas found the planet's actual diameter to be less than the 7,655-mile span that is observed optically. As a result, the astronomers assume that they have measured the planet itself and that the dense cloud covering is at least 40 miles thick, twice as thick as the cloud deck surrounding Earth.