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.
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 ... >
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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 ... >
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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 ... >
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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 ... >
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Deimos (moon) Deimos is probably an asteroid that was perturbed by Jupiter into an orbit that allowed it to be captured by Mars, though this hypothesis is still in ... >
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Precession Precession refers to a change in the direction of the axis of a rotating object. In certain contexts, "precession" may refer to the precession that ... >
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Neptune Neptune is the eighth and outermost planet in our solar system. It is the fourth-largest planet by diameter and the third-largest by mass; Neptune is ... >
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Shift of equinox The precession of the equinoxes refers to the precession of Earth's axis of rotation with respect to inertial space. The precession of the equinoxes ... >
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Geosynchronous orbit A geosynchronous orbit is a geocentric orbit that has the same orbital period as the sidereal rotation period of the Earth. It has a semi-major axis ... >
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Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and by far the largest within the solar system. Jupiter is usually the fourth brightest object in the sky ... >
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