Venus

Recent orbiting spacecraft with radar imaging systems are turning up new, intriguing, even disturbing information about our nearest neighbor. In age, size, density, and volume, Venus is most similar to our home planet. But there the similarity ends, as you'll see in the gallery of photos from recent flybys and telescope and spectroscope views, which, along with computer-generated illustrations, depict the latest ideas of what Venus looks like. A world-famous astronomer and TV science expert leads a guided tour of a place where the atmospheric pressure is 92 times that of earth, temperatures are scorching, and the atmosphere would choke you with toxic clouds of carbon dioxide and sulphuric acid. On your visual adventure, you trek through vast plains, soaring peaks, deep craters, and great lava flows, many times more dramatic than their counterparts on earth. Looking up at the "morning star" will never be the same.