AstroKids › Everything in the sky › Venus
planet · inner rocky planet

Venus

The brightest thing in the sky after the Sun and the Moon. Venus spins backwards — the Sun rises in the west there! It is almost exactly the same size as Earth.

Also called: the Morning Star, the Evening Star.

🕒 When can I see it?🚀 Travel there
Venus — Drawn, not photographed.

What it is

Almost Earth-sized, crushing CO2 atmosphere, hottest planet, volcanic plains.

Planet: Round, orbits a star, and has swept its orbit clear. Every kind of thing there is →

How to find Venus

Its position moves, so there is no fixed place on a map to point at. The Planetarium works out where it is for your own place and date.

Show me Venus in tonight's sky

What you will really see

With your own eyes

The dazzling "evening star" (or morning star) — often the brightest thing after the Moon.

Through a small telescope

No surface detail — just a bright phase, like a little Moon.

🔭 See it drawn as it looks through a telescope
🖨️ A sheet to print for this
🖨️ Print a sheet and go and look
🖨️ Sheet to take outside →

Worth knowing about Venus

Venus is almost a twin of Earth in size. In weight, about 4/5 of Earth's mass. About two-thirds of Earth's distance from the Sun. Sunlight takes 6 minutes to reach Venus — on average, because that distance changes as it goes round. Its year: about two seasons (spring and summer) plus a month and two weeks. Venus spins backwards all the way around every 243 Earth days — longer than its whole 225-day year! But because it spins the 'wrong' way, sunrise actually comes sooner than that: about every 117 Earth days.

What it is made of
Rocky, volcanic plains, thousands of volcanoes.
Its weather
Almost every breath of Venus's air would be carbon dioxide: 96 parts in every 100. That thick blanket traps heat so well that Venus is the hottest planet of all, hotter even than Mercury, under clouds of acid.
The machines we sent
Soviet Venera probes were the first to land on another planet, in the 1970s.
How did anyone measure the Earth in the first place?
The numbers
Across12 104 km
Distance from the Sun, on average0.7 AU ~108 million km · sunlight takes 6 minutes
Once round its orbit224.7 days
One day there-2 802.0 hours
Temperature465 °C (from 437 to 471)
Made of, among other thingscarbon dioxide, sulfur, rock (basalt)

How anyone knows this

Nobody flew a tape measure out there. Every number on this page was worked out from the ground:

What it belongs to

☀️ Everything the Sun holds, in one place📖 How the solar system fits together

Then go outside

Clear tonight? The Planetarium will show you what is worth a look. Then just go out.

🌙 Plan an evening outside🌌 Everything else in the sky