31 Days of Planets: Venus

Day 21

Venus: our sister planet, named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty. She is quite similar in size and shape to Earth, but she is surrounded by clouds of sulfuric acid, with a dense atmosphere of largely carbon dioxide. Imagine what that would do to your complexion. You trying to lose weight? Don't go to Venus. The atmospheric pressure on Venus is 92 times that of Earth. She has no carbon cycle, no organic life to absorb biomass, her oceans vaporized, free hydrogen has been swept away into interplanetary space by solar winds... but she does have rocks and volcanoes. 

There is one other thing that Venus has: she looks magnificent when she crosses paths with the sun.

I have a sticker of Venus. It looks like this:

In conclusion, Venus might be the goddess of love and beauty, but she probably won't do much for you.

Pictures from Wikipedia.

31 Days of Planets: Mercury

Day 14

Mercury is a special planet. It is closest to the sun in our solar system. It is named after the Messenger of the Roman Gods. Mercury has a lot of craters and in that respect is quite similar to the moon. Speaking of craters - Cookie Monster! Cookie Monster is on Mercury, in the form of craters of course. See?

(picture from I09)

Because Mercury is so close to the sun, it is difficult to observe. The spacecraft Mariner 10 was the first to visit Mercury. It took a number of pictures, provided information to NASA, and then ran out of fuel. It is thought to still be orbiting the sun - one, lonely spacecraft, asleep, circling the sun over and over and over and over

             and over and over and over

                          and over and over and over

The MESSENGER spacecraft launched in 2004, and has done several flybys. It successfully entered orbit in 2011, and is now in an extended mission expected to last until 2013. 

Mercury is visible (sometimes) to the naked eye. Just don't stare at the sun too long. Or you might go blind.

In conclusion, Cookie Monster is everywhere.

Pictures from NASA.