Planet
Venus
A backward-spinning world whose day outlasts its year.
Venus spins backward compared with most planets, and so slowly that one rotation (243 Earth days) takes longer than one trip around the Sun (225 days). On Venus the Sun rises in the west and sets in the east. Its tiny tilt means it has no real seasons.
How it moves
- Venus orbits the Sun every 224.7 days on the most circular orbit of any planet (eccentricity 0.0068).
- It rotates retrograde, once every 243 Earth days (5,832.6 hours), longer than its own year.
- Combining the backward spin with the orbit gives a solar day of 2,802 hours, about 117 Earth days.
- Its obliquity of 177.36 degrees means the axis is flipped almost upside down; the equator is tilted only 2.64 degrees from the orbit.
- Venus and Earth line up every 583.92 days (synodic period), the same 584-day cycle over which Venus runs through its phases.
Facts
- Mean radius
- 6,051.8 km
- Mass
- 4.867e+24 kg
- Surface gravity
- 8.87 m/s²
- Rotation period
- 5832.6 hours
- Orbital period
- 224.701 days
- Average distance from the Sun
- 0.72333199 AU
- Eccentricity
- 0.0068
- Axial tilt
- 177.36°
- Mean orbital speed
- 35.02 km/s
- Known moons
- 0
- Discovered
- Known since antiquity
A day on Venus (243 Earth days) is longer than its year (225 Earth days), and the Sun rises in the west.
Sources: nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov, science.nasa.gov