Venus Trivia
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49 free Venus trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Venus trivia quiz is about the planet, Earth's near-twin in size and its opposite in almost everything else. It covers the facts that make it strange: the hottest surface in the Solar System, crushing pressure 92 times ours, clouds of sulfuric acid, winds that lap the planet in four days, a day longer than its year, a Sun that rises in the west, no moons, no small craters and a surface only a few hundred million years old. It visits Ishtar and Aphrodite Terra, Maxwell Montes and the rule that names almost everything on Venus after women. The history and exploration questions follow the Greeks' two stars Phosphorus and Hesperus, Galileo's phases, Horrocks's transit, Cook's voyage to Tahiti, Lomonosov's atmosphere, Mariner 2, the Venera landers that survived minutes on the surface, the Vega balloons, Magellan's radar maps, Japan's Akatsuki, the phosphine debate and the missions still to come. A final group looks at the goddess and her Babylonian, Maya and Old English names, Friday, and the symbol that came to mean female. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is shown on each question, so it works for a classroom, a pub quiz or a space enthusiast. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. Try our Planets and Solar System quizzes for more.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Where does Venus rank in distance from the Sun?
Second
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.
Q 02What makes Venus the hottest planet, even though Mercury orbits closer to the Sun?
A runaway greenhouse effect
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.
Q 03Venus's surface, at about 464 °C, is hot enough to melt which of these metals?
Lead
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.
Q 04The atmospheric pressure at the surface of Venus is roughly how many times Earth's at sea level?
92
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.
Q 05Venus's atmosphere is made almost entirely of which gas?
Carbon dioxide
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.
Q 06The clouds that cover Venus are made of what?
Sulfuric acid
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.
Q 07Venus spins in the opposite direction to most planets, a motion astronomers call what?
Retrograde rotation
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.
Q 08Which of these lasts longer than Venus's 225-day year?
One spin on its own axis
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.
Q 09Seen from the surface of Venus, in which direction would the Sun rise?
In the west
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.
Q 10Venus is often called Earth's 'twin' or 'sister' because of what?
Its similar size and mass
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.
Q 11In Gustav Holst's orchestral suite The Planets, Venus is called the Bringer of what?
Peace
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.
Q 12What is it called when Venus's cloud-top winds circle the planet in just four days?
Atmospheric super-rotation
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.
Q 13Which NASA spacecraft swung past Venus repeatedly between 2018 and 2024, each pass tightening its orbit?
Parker Solar Probe
Q 21Which civilization's precise tables of Venus's 584-day cycle survive in a book known as the Dresden Codex?
The Maya
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.
Q 22What did the ancient Greeks call Venus as morning star and evening star, thinking them two objects?
Phosphorus and Hesperus
Pliny credited Pythagoras with realising they were the same body.
Q 23The Romans called the morning aspect of Venus by what name?
Lucifer
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.
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.
Q 14Venus's highest mountains, found by radar, are named for which physicist whose theory predicted radio waves?
James Clerk Maxwell
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.
Q 15Most surface features on Venus are named after what?
Women, historical and mythological
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.
Q 16The northern highland 'continent' of Venus, about the size of Australia, is named after which goddess?
Ishtar
Ishtar. The Babylonians saw the planet as their goddess Ishtar, and the larger southern highland is named for her Greek counterpart, Aphrodite.
Q 17A 2023 survey of Venus radar maps counted about 85,000 of which feature?
Volcanoes
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.
Q 18Why are the tiniest craters missing from the surface of Venus?
Its thick atmosphere burns up small impactors
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.
Q 19Venus has far fewer impact craters than Mercury or Mars, which tells scientists what about its surface?
Relatively young
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.
Q 20Venus shines so brightly in our sky that it is among the objects most often mistaken for what?
A UFO
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.
Q 24Whose 1610 discovery that Venus shows phases helped demolish the Earth-centred model?
Galileo Galilei
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.
Q 25Why did 18th-century astronomers sail across the world to time the rare transits of Venus?
To find the Sun's distance
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.
Q 26Captain Cook's 1768 Tahiti voyage to time a transit of Venus led on to what?
The exploration of Australia's east coast
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.
Q 27Which American astronomer's early research helped explain why the surface of Venus is so fiercely hot?
Carl Sagan
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.
Q 28Venus makes no magnetic field in its core, so its weak field is instead created by what?
The solar wind
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.
Q 29Which was the first successful interplanetary mission, flying past Venus in December 1962?
Mariner 2
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.
Q 30Which spacecraft made the first soft landing on another planet, on Venus in December 1970?
Venera 7
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.