Venus rotates slower than it orbits
Yep, a day on Venus is longer than its year. Isn't that wild?
You'd be celebrating your birthday more often than you'd actually see…
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- Yep, a day on Venus is longer than its year. Isn't that wild?
- Because the planet rotates backward while it orbits forward, the time from one noon to the next—a solar day—takes about 117 Earth days.
- While Earth's atmosphere is a thin veil, the air on Venus is 90 times denser.
Venus takes 243 Earth days to complete a single rotation on its axis, but only 225 Earth days to orbit the Sun. You would celebrate your birthday more often than you would see a single sunset.
This isn't just a slow spin. Venus is the only planet in our solar system that rotates backward, or clockwise. If you stood on the surface, the sun would rise in the west and set in the east, assuming you could see through the thick sulfuric acid clouds.
Astronomers believe a massive celestial collision trillions of tons heavy likely smacked the planet billions of years ago. The impact was so violent it pushed the planet’s rotation into a grinding halt and forced it to start spinning the wrong way.
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