TITLE: Venus (planet): Rifts
Rifts are among the most spectacular tectonic features on Venus. The best-developed rifts are found atop broad, raised areas such as Beta Regio, sometimes radiating outward from their centres like the spokes of a giant wheel. Beta and several other similar regions on Venus appear to be places where large areas of the lithosphere have been forced...
TITLE: Venus (planet): Observations from Earth
SECTION: Observations from Earth
...Subsequent observations determined the rotation properties more precisely and began to unveil some of the major features on the planet’s surface. The first features to be observed were dubbed Alpha, Beta, and Maxwell, the last after James Clerk Maxwell, the Scottish physicist who first derived some of the basic equations that describe the propagation of electromagnetic radiation. These three...