Our Solar System: Venus

Venus is a hot and hellish world and the second planet from the sun. The Earth-size planet could be considered our twin if not for its thick, toxic atmosphere and surface temperatures that are hot enough to melt lead.

Despite such extremes, researchers have long wondered if organisms could exist in the upper cloud layers of Venus, where more clement conditions can be found. Controversial data suggest that Earth's sister world in the solar system may not be so different from life-bearing Earth after all.

Venus' modern name comes from the ancient Roman goddess of love and beauty, according to NASA(opens in new tab). After the sun and the moon, Venus is the third-brightest object in Earth's sky, meaning people have known about it since time immemorial.

The ancient Greeks named Venus after their own love goddess Aphrodite, while the ancient Egyptians named the planet for the goddess Isis,according to the European Southern Observatory . Other names for Venus include Astarte (Phoenician), Fria (Saxon), Ishtar (Sumerian) and Jīnxīng (Great White One in Chinese). The Maya considered Venus a god of war and kept careful records of its position in the sky.

What Is Venus Made Of ?

Like Earth, Venus is a rocky planet. With a diameter of 7,520 miles (12,100 kilometers), according to NASA

, Venus is only a little smaller than our planet, with a mass about 80% of Earth's, according to Live Science's sister site Space.com.

The interior composition of Venus is quite similar to that of Earth; both planets have an iron core surrounded by a hot-rock mantle and a thin outer crust,according to NASA

. Venus' surface is covered in a range of geological structures, such as mountains, valleys and volcanoes. It even has continent-like features, including an Australia-size rocky highland area called Ishtar Terra near its north pole, and an even larger, South-America-size region called Aphrodite Terra stretching across its equator.

Venus has very few visible impact craters, suggesting that its surface is relatively young. Mounting evidence suggests that our nearest planetary neighbor is still geologically active, with a partially molten mantle, moving tectonic plates and erupting volcanoes.

The atmosphere of Venus is mainly carbon dioxide and contains thick permanent clouds composed of sulfuric acid, according to NASA. This creates an intense surface pressure more than 90 times that of the Earth and surface temperatures near 900 degrees Fahrenheit (482 degrees Celsius). Water can't exist in liquid form on the surface, and very little water vapor exists in Venus' atmosphere.

How Far Is Venus From The Sun

Venus is 67 million miles (108 million km) from the sun on average,according to NASA , which is roughly 70% the distance between Earth and the sun. Venus is the nearest planet to our world, coming within roughly 38 million miles (61 million km) at its closest approach.

The length of a year on Venus is 225 Earth days, but because our sister world spins extremely slowly on its axis, its day length is longer than its year — 243 Earth days, according to NASA. The sun rises in the west and sets in the east on Venus because the planet spins in the opposite direction to ours, though nobody knows why.