Aphroditography
Aphroditography is a term created by the German astronomer Johann Hieronymus Schroeter , which appears in the title of his Aphroditographic Fragments (1796) and was intended to designate the planetography of Venus , i.e. the science of the design and surface structures of Venus. The term was formed in analogy to the terms geography (earth), selenography (moon) and areography (Mars), with Aphrodite being the Greek equivalent of the Roman goddess Venus .
The spread of the term was of course opposed to the completely impenetrable cloud cover of Venus in the optical range , which made it impossible to recognize surface structures until surface features could be recorded for the first time from the middle of the 20th century through radar examinations and space probes.
Schroeter had wrongly assumed that the systematic differences he observed between the calculated and observed phases of Venus were due to surface structures (mountain ranges). In a paper published in 1803 on the Venus phase at the time of the dichotomy (half-venus), however, he correctly concluded that it was twilight effects in the atmosphere. The phenomenon is now known as the Schröter effect . With the exception of a small essay by Carl Schoy, the term aphroditography was no longer taken up and is now obsolete.
literature
- Johann Heinrich Schroeter: Aphroditographic fragments, for a more detailed knowledge of the planet Venus. Together with the attached description of the Lilienthal 27-foot telescope. Fleckeisen, Helmstedt 1796.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Carl Schoy: Basics of a comparative geo- and aphroditography (earth and evening astrology). In: Naturwissenschaftliche Wochenschrift No. 29 (1914), pp. 449–451.