Venus: a hybrid world whose two data products are both still pending

Measured facts

Classification

Terrestrial planet

Mean radius

6,052 kmPublished mean radius stored as renderer geometry.

Mean diameter

12,104 km

Mean radius in Earth radii

0.950

Appearance

Hybrid atmosphere / radar foundation · assets pending

Observation epoch

No observational appearance integrated

What you are looking at

Venus needs two different pictures that must never be confused. A cloud-top observation shows an atmosphere at a stated epoch; Magellan radar backscatter shows a surface, is not visible light, and never becomes a "photo" of the ground.

COSMOS registers both contracts and classifies the world as hybrid, then keeps both unloaded. There is no fallback texture, because a plausible-looking substitute would be worse than an honest blank.

The sphere you see is a mean-radius proxy with a marker colour. It carries no observational claim in the object panel or on this page.

Distance, scale and light time

Distances here are computed from the shipped JPL Horizons state archive, sampled once per day across its declared coverage (2020-01-01 00:00 TDB through 2040-01-01 00:00 TDB). Because both bodies move on different orbits, the separation changes constantly; the figures below include the dates at which the extremes occur.

Distance from Earth

0.578 AU · 86,396,690 kmAt the recorded snapshot epoch 2026-08-29 00:00 TDB, one-way light time 4.80 minutes.

Distance from the Sun

0.728 AU · 108,930,145 kmComputed in the same epochs and frame (Earth-centred ecliptic J2000.0 / ICRF).

Closest Earth approach in the archive

0.265260 AU on 2038-01-03One-way light time then: 2.21 minutes.

Farthest separation in the archive

1.735280 AU on 2024-06-05One-way light time then: 14.43 minutes.

Mean separation across the archive

1.119946 AUSampled once per day across 2020-01-01 00:00 TDB through 2040-01-01 00:00 TDB (7,306 samples).

Delivery and camera limits

COSMOS stops the camera at 1.08 mean radii for Venus. This body has no observational imagery integrated yet, so only an educational-geometry limit applies.

Appearance status

Hybrid atmosphere / radar foundation · assets pending

Renderer provider id

venus-visual-v1

Closest permitted approach

1.08 mean radiiEducational geometry limit only; no observational surface imagery is integrated for this body yet.

Rotation model

Approximate static display orientation — Not yet a selected-date body-fixed solutionNo external orientation kernel is used for this body.

Geometry

mean-radius-sphereMean-radius sphere; no ellipsoid or terrain displacement yet

Provenance

Appearance provenance is carried by the provider at runtime, not added by the page: no appearance layer is registered for this body, so only geometry and position are claimed.

Category

artist-educational-representationNo provider-supplied appearance record exists yet; this is the registry classification.

Registry source

NASA/JPL Solar System Dynamics

Limitations COSMOS discloses

• Appearance incomplete; no observational surface or atmosphere claimed
• No cloud-atmosphere product and no Magellan radar product is integrated; both remain pending validation.
• Radar-derived data will always be labelled as radar, never presented as visible-light ground imagery.
• Position is interpolated inside 2020-01-01 00:00 TDB through 2040-01-01 00:00 TDB; requesting an epoch outside that window is rejected instead of extrapolated.