Caption: The layers of the Venusian atmosphere (AKA the atmosphere of Venus).

Features:

1. Note 1 bar ≡ 100 kPa = 10**5 Pa ≅ 0.987 atm ≅ 14.5038 psi, and so is fiducial value for the Earth's atmosphere surface pressure.

2. The complete cloud cover of Venus (which gives it its bland yellowish white color in the visible) is in 3 main layers that span 48--68 km above the surface (Seeds-467).

3. The clouds are thought to be mostly sulfuric acid droplets and sulfur crystals and a thin haze of ??? extends down to 33 km (Seeds-467).

4. There is some speculation that life could exist in the Venusian clouds. Some kinds of terrestrial extremophiles can live under the acidic and CO_2 rich conditions of the clouds. This is highly speculative speculation, of course (see Gr-xviii,282--283)

5. Yes: there is SULFURIC ACID RAIN on Venus, but the droplets evaporate before they hit the ground because the high temperature (HI-171).

6. The lower altitudes of the Venusian atmosphere are, in fact, quite clear.

7. But the thick CO_2 atmosphere strongly absorbs in the blue ???? and this makes the illumination orangy (HI-173; FMW-194).

   If the illumination is orangy everything looks orangy on the surface. This is what is shown by the true-color photographs from the Soviet Venera landers (1961--1985).

8. Not a lot of sunlight gets to the surface: only about 3 % (Ze2002-184) which is a lot less than the 40 % of the sunlight that gets to the Earth's surface (Ze2002-157).

   The daytime illumination would be about the same as that of an Earth day with heavy cloud cover (FMW-194).