Venus is one of the noticeable objects in the night sky due to being one of the brightest objects in our night sky with only the Sun and Moon being brighter. Venus is the second planet from the Sun and is often referred to as Earth’s sister planet. Due to the similarities in size and mass to earth and being the closest planet to Earth. Venus’s surface is hidden by thick clouds which are made up of dangerous sulphuric acid. We take a look at some fascinating Venus facts the planet named after the Roman goddess and love and beauty and the second largest terrestrial planet.
Venus Facts
- Venus the third brightest object in the night sky after the Sun and Moon
- There are no moons and no ring system on Venus
- Venus is referred to as Earth’s sister planet
- Venus is known as the morning star and evening star
- One day on Venus is longer than one Earth year
- Venus is only slightly smaller than Earth
- Venus has an iron core and rocky exterior
- No one person can lay claim to Venus’s discovery
- Venus has an atmosphere that is made up 96.5% of carbon dioxide
- Venus rotates the opposite way to most other planets
- Thirty-eight spacecraft have visited Venus
- The soviet union carried out the first space mission to Venus
- Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system
Venus Orbit & Rotation
The orbit and rotation of all our planets have long been a fascination. Venus is no different in fact due to the similarities to that of Earth and why it is called Earth’s sister planet.
The planet Venus is the second planet from the Sun, and it orbits at a distance of 0.72 AU once every 224.7 days. Let’s take a look at some more fascinating Venus facts.
How Long Does It Take Venus to Orbit the Sun
Venus circumnavigates the Sun in a more circular orbit than any of the other planets, and it completes a solar orbit once every 224.7 days.
How Far From the Sun Does Venus Orbit
Venus’s average distance from the Sun is 0.72Au (67 million miles, or 108 million km). Due to its highly circular orbit with an eccentricity of less than 0.01, this distance stays fairly constant over the course of its 224.7-day circumnavigation of the Sun.
Does Venus Spin Backwards
Seen from above the Earth’s north pole, Venus rotates in a clockwise direction. This is backwards, or retrograde, from all the other planets in our solar system, which rotate in a counterclockwise direction when viewed from the same perspective.
How Long Is a Year on Venus
One year on Venus lasts 224.7 Earth days, roughly two-thirds the time it takes Earth to circle the Sun.
How Long Is a Day on Venus
At 243 Earth days, it takes Venus longer to complete a solar orbit than one of its own days. In fact, one Venusian day is 1.08 Venusian years.
Venus History
Venus offers fascination to us down on Earth due to how bright it is in our night sky. However, it all started off somewhere and this is what Venus’s history section covers. We take a look at who discovered the many space missions that have taken place over the years.
How Old Is Venus
Venus is 4.503 billion years old, the same age as Jupiter. This is forty million years younger than the Earth and one hundred million years younger than Mars.
How Did Venus Get Its Name
Venus has a long history of being named after female goddesses of love. Venus is the Roman goddess of love, but the planet was also known as Ishtar, after the Babylonian goddess of womanhood and love.
Who Discovered Venus
There is no one person who can be credited with the discovery of Venus. The ancient Greeks, who originally thought of Venus as two separate celestial objects, credited both Pythagorus and Parmenidas with the discovery that it was one, but the Sumerians of the First Babylonian dynasty were already aware of this fact. Galileo Galilei, though, was the first person to point a telescope at Venus, discovered its phases, and disproved Ptolemy’s heliocentric view of the universe.
How Was Venus Discovered
Venus wasn’t discovered in the traditional sense of the word. There’s no one eureka moment at which one can point and say before then Venus was unknown. In fact, Venus has been part of the human experience since at least 1600BC, when a Babylonian text described a twenty-one-year record of its appearances.
Why Is Venus Called Earth’s Twin
Venus shares a similar size, mass, and terrestrial nature to the Earth. They also have similar internal compositions and proximity to the Sun.
How Many Spacecrafts Have Visited Venus
Beginning with NASA’s Mariner 2 mission in December 1962, and continuing into the present day with Japan’s continuing Akatsuki orbiting data collection, at least thirty-eight spacecraft have visited Venus.
Venus Atmospheric Structure and Dynamics
Venus has one of the most dangerous atmospheres in our solar system. We look at some of the common questions about Venus’s atmospheric structure and its dynamic structure.
Does Venus Have Rings
Venus does not have rings. Rings are generally formed around planets by water ice chunks, but it is too warm in Venus’s orbit. Rings can also be created by micrometeoroids smashing into a small moon, but Venus has no moon for this destruction to happen.
Does Venus Have Moons
Venus is one of only two planets in our solar system that have no moon; Mercury is the other. Scientists hypothesize Venus may have had a moon in the past, but it either slowly crept away (as the Earth is currently doing) or was pulled into Venus by the planet’s mass.
How Much Gravity Is on Venus
Venus has ninety percent the gravity of Earth, 8.87 m/s2. A person weighing 100 kg on Earth would weigh 90 kg on Venus.
How Much Water Is on Venus
At over four and a half times water’s boiling point, the surface of Venus is far too hot for liquid water to exist. Venus’s lack of magnetosphere also keeps water vapor from staying in the atmosphere, so there is nearly no water on Venus to be found.
What Is the Diameter of Venus
Venus is 12,103.6 km across, only 638.4 km less than the Earth.
What Is Venus Made of
Venus is a terrestrial planet, which means it is made of rock. Similar to the Earth, Venus has an iron core and rocky exterior.
Is Venus Rocky
Venus consists nearly exclusively of rock. The Soviet Venera landers sent back images of angular rocks, sediment, and no other materials.
What Is Venus Atmosphere Made of
Venus’s atmosphere is primarily carbon dioxide (96.5%) with a small amount of nitrogen (3.5%). There are small traces of other gases, as well, including sulfur dioxide.
What Is Venus Temperature
Venus’s surface temperature is nearly constant at 464 degrees Celsius, almost five times the boiling point of water.
Is Venus Hotter Than Mars?
Venus is magnitudes hotter than Mars. Being both farther from the Sun and lacking a thermal blanket like Venus or the Earth, Mars’s temperature averages about minus 60 degrees Celsius, over four hundred degrees cooler than Venus.
Why Is Venus So Hot
Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system to due to the runaway greenhouse effect of its primary carbon dioxide atmosphere. Acid clouds and the thick air reflect most of the Sun’s energy back to Venus rather than allowing it to escape into space.
How Much Gravity Is On Venus
Venus has ninety percent the gravity of Earth, 8.87 m/s2. A person weighing 100 kg on Earth would weigh 90 kg on Venus.
What Color Is Venus
Venus’s color depends on your perspective. From space, Venus’s cloud cover makes her appear white. From the ground, though, the filtered light makes the rocks, which are differing shades of grey, appear orange.
Can We Live on Venus
No life as we know it could survive on the surface of Venus. It’s too hot, too acidic, and too dense. Even high in the planet’s atmosphere, where some have speculated it might be possible to float, it would still be very hot and acidic.
What Would Happen To You On Venus?
You would die very quickly if you were to land on Venus. Assuming you made it to the surface safely, you would be presented with temperatures high enough to melt lead, an unbreathable atmosphere, and crushing pressures. You would be simultaneously melted, suffocated, and smashed.
Comparing Venus and Distances
One of the most searched-after bits of information is how far a planet is from us down on Earth. We love to compare the planet’s size to earth other even countries that are down on earth. Below we look at the size compared to other planets and how far they are from each other.
How Far Is Venus From Earth
Venus and the Earth are anywhere from 38 million kilometers to 261 million kilometers apart.
How Big Is Venus Compared to Earth
Venus is only slightly smaller than Earth. In fact, her diameter is only 638.4 km smaller than Earth’s.
How Long Does It Take to Get to Venus
Travel times to Venus vary greatly based on launch speed and trajectory. The first successful flyby of Venus by NASA’s Mariner 2 probe took 110 days to arrive after its launch, but the more recent ESA probe, Venus Express, was in space 153 days between launch and arrival.
How Big Is Venus Compared to the Moon
The Moon and Venus are vastly different sizes, of course. The size of Venus is 6,051.8 km, while the diameter of the Sun is 1,737.1 km. In other words, the Sun is 3.5 times larger than Venus
How Far Is Venus From the Moon
The Earth is around 100 times closer to Venus than the Moon. Venus is about 38 million km from the moon.
How Far Is Venus From the Sun
Venus is 108.58 million km (67,200,000 miles) or 0.7 AU from the Sun.
How Big Is Venus Compared To The Sun
Venus is significantly different from that of the Sun, Venus’s diameter is 12,103 km and the Sun has a diameter of 1.4 million km. A vast difference in size meaning the Sun is around 115 times bigger than Venus.
