Can you see earthshine on Venus?

Nope. You can barely see the dark lunar surface faintly lit by the light from the 'silvery earth' at a distance of 1/4 million miles. Venus is nearly 30 million miles away at closest approach so it is 120 times farther away than the Moon. As you remember, light intensity follows the inverse-square law so that at the distance of Venus, the light from earth is 120^2 = 144,000 times fainter! Earth as seen from Venus is actually a bit fainter than Venus as seen from the Earth, and you can hardly read a newspaper by 'Venus light'.


Copyright 1997 Dr. Sten Odenwald
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