Sunday, November 6th - Photo Of The Week... Our photo of the week today features a beautiful and somewhat rare occurrence, a halo around the planet Venus. This wonderful shot was taken on Wednesday evening at 6:40pm from Storm Mountain. While known as our sister planet, Venus is actually quite different from Earth in many ways. The entire planet is shrouded in a layer of thick methane clouds allowing very little sunlight to reach the surface. This cloud layer also holds heat in the planet's atmosphere resulting in the extremely high surface temperatures, despite the lack of direct sunlight. The dense clouds reflect the majority of sunlight reaching Venus, thus leading to it's bright appearance from our home planet. Another interesting fact about Venus, is that its rotation is opposite that of Earth and the other planets in our solar system. Scientists are unclear as to why Venus rotates the opposite direction. One theory is that a large meteor or comet impact may have changed the planet's rotation. Venus has been especially bright the past few weeks and will be extremely close to the crescent moon tonight. This is a perfect opportunity for those who have never seen our sister planet to do so, as it's close proximity to the moon will make finding it very easy. Below is a sky map showing the location of the Moon and Venus at 5:30PM MST tonight.
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