49 Fun Facts About Venus

Where does Venus rank in distance from the Sun?

Second. Venus orbits between Mercury and Earth and swings closer to us than any other planet, yet averaged over time it is Mercury that is more often the closest planet to Earth.

What makes Venus the hottest planet, even though Mercury orbits closer to the Sun?

A runaway greenhouse effect. Venus's bright clouds bounce away so much sunlight that it absorbs less of the Sun's energy than Earth does, yet its dense air traps that heat and bakes the ground.

Venus's surface, at about 464 °C, is hot enough to melt which of these metals?

Lead. It melts at about 327 °C, well below the heat of Venus's surface, which is hotter than Mercury's even though Mercury orbits much closer to the Sun.

The atmospheric pressure at the surface of Venus is roughly how many times Earth's at sea level?

92. That is the squeeze found about a kilometre down in Earth's oceans, and together with the heat it is why no lander has kept working on Venus for much more than two hours.

Venus's atmosphere is made almost entirely of which gas?

Carbon dioxide. It makes up about 96% of an atmosphere so heavy that at ground level the gas is squeezed into a dense, corrosive fluid, no longer behaving like ordinary air.

The clouds that cover Venus are made of what?

Sulfuric acid. The yellowish acid clouds reflect most of the sunlight that strikes them, which is why Venus shines brighter in our sky than any other planet.

Venus spins in the opposite direction to most planets, a motion astronomers call what?

Retrograde rotation. Astronomers have no agreed explanation: one idea is a giant collision while Venus was forming, another the slow drag of the Sun's tides on its heavy atmosphere.

Which of these lasts longer than Venus's 225-day year?

One spin on its own axis. Venus takes 243 Earth days to turn once, but because it turns the opposite way to its orbit, sunrise still comes round about every 117 Earth days.

Seen from the surface of Venus, in which direction would the Sun rise?

In the west. Venus spins the opposite way to Earth, so sunrise and sunset swap sides, though the planet's unbroken clouds would hide the Sun from anyone standing there.

Venus is often called Earth's 'twin' or 'sister' because of what?

Its similar size and mass. Venus is about 95% as wide as Earth, but conditions under its clouds are so hostile that NASA calls it Earth's evil twin.

In Gustav Holst's orchestral suite The Planets, Venus is called the Bringer of what?

Peace. Holst set the calm Venus movement straight after 'Mars, the Bringer of War', and said he took each planet's character from astrology, not from the Roman gods.

What is it called when Venus's cloud-top winds circle the planet in just four days?

Atmospheric super-rotation. The winds blow at hundreds of kilometres an hour at the cloud tops, far faster than the planet turns, yet they fade with depth until the air at ground level moves at a walking pace.

Which NASA spacecraft swung past Venus repeatedly between 2018 and 2024, each pass tightening its orbit?

Parker Solar Probe. Each pass let Venus's gravity drop it closer to the Sun, and along the way its camera unexpectedly saw through the clouds to the planet's glowing surface.

Venus's highest mountains, found by radar, are named for which physicist whose theory predicted radio waves?

James Clerk Maxwell. Maxwell Montes rise about 11 km, higher than Everest, and they kept his name because it was given before the planet's present naming rules were adopted.

Most surface features on Venus are named after what?

Women, historical and mythological. Large craters honour famous women such as Cleopatra, while craters under 20 km across are simply given common women's first names.

The northern highland 'continent' of Venus, about the size of Australia, is named after which goddess?

Ishtar. The Babylonians saw the planet as their goddess Ishtar, and the larger southern highland is named for her Greek counterpart, Aphrodite.

A 2023 survey of Venus radar maps counted about 85,000 of which feature?

Volcanoes. About 99% of them are less than 5 km wide, small enough to have been passed over by earlier surveys, so Venus turned out to hold far more volcanoes than anyone had mapped.

Why are the tiniest craters missing from the surface of Venus?

Its thick atmosphere burns up small impactors. Rocks that only just survive the plunge tend to shatter on the way down, so the smallest craters on Venus are often clusters of ragged pits.

Venus has far fewer impact craters than Mercury or Mars, which tells scientists what about its surface?

Relatively young. Few craters mean that geologic activity has repaved most of Venus within the last billion years, whether in one great burst or bit by bit, burying the scars of older impacts.

Venus shines so brightly in our sky that it is among the objects most often mistaken for what?

A UFO. Venus is that bright because it comes closer to Earth than any other planet while wrapped in highly reflective cloud, which makes it the third-brightest object in our whole sky.

Which civilization's precise tables of Venus's 584-day cycle survive in a book known as the Dresden Codex?

The Maya. Their Venus tables are accurate enough to have made the Maya's name as astronomers, and they survive in one of the few Maya books that escaped burning by Spanish clergy.

What did the ancient Greeks call Venus as morning star and evening star, thinking them two objects?

Pliny credited Pythagoras with realising they were the same body.

The Romans called the morning aspect of Venus by what name?

Lucifer. The name passed to the Devil only later, after a Bible verse about a fall from heaven that used it for the morning star was read by Christians as a description of Satan.

Whose 1610 discovery that Venus shows phases helped demolish the Earth-centred model?

Galileo Galilei. Through his telescope Venus ran from a small full disc to a large thin crescent, a cycle that can only happen if the planet circles the Sun and not the Earth.

Why did 18th-century astronomers sail across the world to time the rare transits of Venus?

To find the Sun's distance. Timings from far-apart places gave the scale of the whole Solar System, and the chance is rare: after 2004 and 2012, Venus next crosses the Sun in 2117.

Captain Cook's 1768 Tahiti voyage to time a transit of Venus led on to what?

The exploration of Australia's east coast. With the transit timed, Cook turned to a further, confidential order to hunt for a rumoured southern continent, and that search carried him to Australia.

Which American astronomer's early research helped explain why the surface of Venus is so fiercely hot?

Carl Sagan. Before any spacecraft had been there he rejected the balmy, swampy Venus that many imagined, then helped NASA plan the first probe that proved him right.

Venus makes no magnetic field in its core, so its weak field is instead created by what?

The solar wind. As that stream of charged particles from the Sun hits Venus's upper air it induces a weak field, which trails away behind the planet like the tail of a comet.

Which was the first successful interplanetary mission, flying past Venus in December 1962?

Mariner 2. It flew just 36 days after its twin, Mariner 1, veered off course and had to be destroyed, and although it carried no camera it showed Venus to be far hotter than expected.

Which spacecraft made the first soft landing on another planet, on Venus in December 1970?

Venera 7. Earlier probes in the series had failed before reaching the ground, and this one nearly joined them: its parachute gave out and it reached the ground in little more than half the planned descent time.

For roughly how long did the first Venus lander transmit data from the surface?

About 20 minutes. The lander had come down far too fast after its parachute failed, and from the ground it managed only a very weak signal before it fell silent.

Which nation's landers sent the first pictures from the surface of Venus, in 1975?

The Soviet Union. An earlier lander had first measured the gloom beneath the clouds to check there was enough light for photographs, and found about as much as on an overcast day on Earth.

Which NASA spacecraft mapped the surface of Venus with radar between 1990 and 1994?

Magellan. Its radar imaged about 98% of the surface through the clouds, and when the work was done controllers deliberately sent it plunging into the atmosphere, where it burned up.

The Vega probes dropped balloons into Venus's clouds in 1985 on their way to meet which comet?

Halley's Comet. Each balloon drifted through the cloud layer for about two days, the first flight by any aircraft on another planet, while the motherships sped on to meet the comet in 1986.

Which country's Venus probe missed its orbit in 2010 but succeeded five years later?

Japan. Akatsuki's engine cut out less than three minutes into a 12-minute braking burn, yet the rescue five years later made it Japan's first successful mission to another planet.

Which gas, tentatively detected in 2020, sparked speculation about life in Venus's clouds?

Phosphine. On Earth the gas is made only by industry or by microbes that thrive without oxygen, which is why the claim caused a stir, though later studies doubted the signal was phosphine at all.

What kinds of craft are VERITAS and DAVINCI, the Venus missions NASA selected in 2021?

An orbiter and an atmospheric probe. VERITAS is to map the surface by radar from orbit while DAVINCI drops a sphere through the clouds, both chosen to learn how a world so like Earth became an inferno.

At what altitude above Venus are pressure and temperature similar to Earth's?

About 50 km. Conditions at that height are so Earth-like that NASA has studied a mission concept in which crewed airships would explore Venus by floating there instead of landing.

Venus is named after the Roman goddess of what?

Love. Venus began as an Italian goddess of gardens and fields with no myths of her own, and only later took over the stories of the Greek Aphrodite.

Which day of the week is associated with Venus and its goddesses?

Friday. The Romans called it dies Veneris, the day of Venus, which French keeps as vendredi, while the Germanic peoples translated the name using their own goddess Frigg.

In Chinese, Japanese and Korean, the everyday name for Venus translates literally as what?

Gold star. Chinese astronomers matched the five visible planets to the five elements and gave Venus metal, written with a character that also means gold; its older name was the Great White.

Venus's wide, steep-sided lava domes are nicknamed after which food?

Pancakes. The domes are thought to form when unusually thick, sticky lava oozes to the surface and spreads evenly in every direction, and the largest are about 60 km across.

The astronomical symbol for Venus, a circle over a small cross, is now widely used to mean what?

Female. The sign is often said to show the goddess's hand mirror, and its partner for male is the shield and spear of Mars.

Which metal did Western alchemists represent with the Venus symbol?

Copper. The metal's very name comes from Cyprus, where the ancient world mined much of its copper and which was the island held sacred to Aphrodite, the Greek goddess the Romans called Venus.

In The Lord of the Rings, Galadriel's phial holds the light of which star, Tolkien's version of Venus?

Eärendil. Tolkien took the name from an Old English poem hailing 'Earendel, brightest of angels', a word he read as the bright star that heralds the dawn.

Venus's axis is tilted by only about 3 degrees, which leaves the planet with what?

Almost no seasons. Earth's 23-degree lean is what gives us summer and winter, so with barely any lean Venus gets no seasonal relief from its heat at any time of year.

What is the name of Venus's quasi-satellite, an asteroid that shares its orbit?

Zoozve. An artist copying the label 2002 VE onto a children's poster misread his own handwriting, a radio host spotted the odd name on his child's wall, and astronomers made it official in 2024.

Which 1974 probe used Venus for the first interplanetary gravity assist, bending its path to Mercury?

Mariner 10. Borrowing a planet's gravity to change course has been a staple of deep-space flight ever since, and its ultraviolet pictures on the way past showed how fast Venus's clouds race around.

Pliny the Elder credited which thinker with realising the morning and evening 'stars' were one object?

Pythagoras. The credit was disputed even in antiquity: the biographer Diogenes Laertius reported that Parmenides was believed to have spotted it first, while noting that others named Pythagoras.