Venus appears as the third brightest natural object in Earth's sky after the Moon and Sun. This is due to its close proximity to both Earth and the Sun, as well as its large size and high reflecting surface.
On Venus, a day is longer than a year: one day lasts 243 Earth days out there, while one year lasts only 225 Earth days. So it is faster for Venus to orbit the Sun than to rotate about its axis.
The surface of Venus is impossible to view from the Earth, even with the most powerful telescopes. It's all about an opaque layer of highly reflective clouds of sulfuric acid covering the entire planet.
The surface pressure on Venus is about 93 atmospheres. This destroyed the first Soviet landers that were sent there for research. The extremely high temperature and pressure melted and crushed the landers.
Venus is the hottest planet in the Solar System with a mean temperature of 464 °C. Even though it is the second planet from the Sun, Venus has a thick atmosphere that keeps it warm at night.
Venus is sometimes referred to as Earth's "evil twin" due to its similar size and proximity to Earth, but its extremely harsh conditions, including a poisonous atmosphere, high pressure, and surface temperatures hot enough to melt a spacecraft.
Venus has a thick atmosphere composed of 96.5% carbon dioxide, with most of the remaining 3.5% being nitrogen, which creates the strongest greenhouse effect in the Solar System.
The first spacecraft to land on Venus was Venera 7. On 15 December 1970, the Soviet spacecraft became the first to soft land on another planet and the first to transmit data from Venus back to Earth.
Venus rotates in a retrograde direction, meaning against its orbital motion, causing the Sun to rise in the west and set in the east. Unlike most planets that rotate in an anticlockwise direction, Venus rotates clockwise.
Venus has the slowest rotation of any planet in the Solar System. For this reason, Venus is more nearly spherical than most planets. Fast rotation tends to bulge planets at the equator and flatten at the poles.
The equator of Venus rotates at a speed of 6.52 km/h, whereas Earth's equator rotates at 1,674.4 km/h. The difference in speed is almost 257 times!
Venus has the closest orbit to Earth of any other planet in the Solar System, resulting in the lowest gravitational potential difference between the two planets. This makes Venus the most accessible destination and gravity assist waypoint for interplanetary missions. Venus was the target of the first interplanetary flight in human history.
At the surface of Venus, the crushing atmospheric pressure is about 93 times greater than that at the surface of Earth. This is equivalent to the pressure at a depth of nearly 1 km under Earth's oceans.
Despite its slow rotation, Venus has little surface temperature variation between its hemispheres that face and do not face the Sun. This is due to heat transfer by lower atmosphere winds.
The clouds on Venus reflect and scatter about 90% of the sunlight back into space. Although Venus is closer to the Sun, it receives less sunlight on its ground compared to Earth. It prevents observing the planet's surface visually.
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