Venus is the second-closest planet to the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days.

It is the brightest object in the night sky, except for the Moon, reaching an apparent magnitude of -4.6.

Venus reaches its maximum brightness shortly before sunrise or shortly after sunset, and is often referred to as the Morning Star or as the Evening Star.

A terrestrial planet, it is sometimes called Earth's "sister planet", as the two are similar in size and bulk composition.

The planet is covered with an opaque layer of highly reflective clouds and its surface cannot be seen from space in visible light, making it a subject of great speculation until some of its secrets were revealed by planetary science in the twentieth century.

Venus has the densest atmosphere of the terrestrial planets, consisting mostly of carbon dioxide, and the atmospheric pressure at the planet's surface is 90 times that of the Earth..

For more information about the topic Venus, read the full article at Wikipedia.org, or see the following related articles:

Mercury (planet) — Mercury is the innermost and smallest planet in the solar system, orbiting the Sun once every 88 days. It ranges in brightness from about −2.0 ...  > read more

Saturn — Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun. It is a gas giant, the second-largest planet in the solar system after Jupiter. Saturn has a prominent ...  > read more

Phobos (moon) — Phobos is the larger and innermost of Mars' two moons, and is named after Phobos, son of Ares (Mars) from Greek Mythology. Phobos orbits closer to a ...  > read more

Uranus — Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun. It is a gas giant, the third largest by diameter and fourth largest by mass. NASA's Voyager 2 is the only ...  > read more

Related Stories

Did A Mega-Collision Alter Venus? (February 27, 2008) — A mega-collision between two large embryonic planets could have created Venus as we know it, according to a new paper by a Cardiff University scientist. Venus is a sister planet to Earth. It is ...  > read more

Plan To Identify Watery Earth-Like Planets Develops (April 26, 2008) — Astronomers are looking to identify Earth-like watery worlds circling distant stars from a glint of light seen through an optical space telescope and a newly developed mathematical ...  > read more

'Fab Five' Make Rare Appearance In Night Sky (March 22, 2004) — Like a busy urban family, planets rarely get together all at once. Later this month, however, the five so-called naked-eye planets - Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn - will reunite in the ...  > read more

Venus: Global Structure Of Winds And Clouds Have Been Mapped (September 5, 2008) — Venus is a planet similar in size to the Earth. Nevertheless, it is quite different in other aspects. On the one hand, it spins very slowly on its axis, taking 224 terrestrial days and, moreover, it ...  > read more

Key Molecule Discovered In Venus's Atmosphere (May 16, 2008) — Venus Express has detected the molecule hydroxyl on another planet for the first time. This detection gives scientists an important new tool to unlock the workings of Venus's dense ...  > read more

Search ScienceDaily

Discovering A New Earth 430 Light Years Away