How long venus orbit the sun

Venus and Earth have many similarities. Both are terrestrial planets , meaning that they are composed predominately of metal and silicate rock, which is differentiated between a metal core and a silicate mantle and crust. Both also orbit the Sun within its habitable zone aka. However, Venus is also starkly different from Earth in a number of ways.

It is also the hottest planet in the Solar System, with temperatures hot enough to melt lead! And on top of all that, a year on Venus is much different than a year on Earth. Venus orbits the Sun at an average distance of about 0. Our nearness to Venus is a matter of perspective. The planet is nearly as big around as Earth — 7, miles 12, kilometers across, versus 7, miles 12, kilometers for Earth.

From Earth, Venus is the brightest object in the night sky after our own Moon. The ancients, therefore, gave it great importance in their cultures, even thinking it was two objects: a morning star and an evening star.

At its nearest to Earth, Venus is some 38 million miles about 61 million kilometers distant. One more trick of perspective: how Venus looks through binoculars or a telescope. The complete cycle, however, new to full, takes days, while our Moon takes just a month.

And it was this perspective, the phases of Venus first observed by Galileo through his telescope, that provided the key scientific proof for the Copernican heliocentric nature of the Solar System.

Spending a day on Venus would be quite a disorienting experience — that is, if your ship or suit could protect you from temperatures in the range of degrees Fahrenheit Celsius. For another, because of the planet's extremely slow rotation, sunrise to sunset would take Earth days.

And by the way, the Sun would rise in the west and set in the east, because Venus spins backward compared to Earth. In winter, the tilt means the rays are less direct. No such luck on Venus: Its very slight tilt is only three degrees, which is too little to produce noticeable seasons. A critical question for scientists who search for life among the stars: How do habitable planets get their start? The close similarities of early Venus and Earth, and their very different fates, provide a kind of test case for scientists who study planet formation.

Similar size, similar interior structure, both harboring oceans in their younger days. Yet one is now an inferno, while the other is the only known world — so far — to play host to abundant life. The factors that set these planets on almost opposite paths began, most likely, in the swirling disk of gas and dust from which they were born. Somehow, 4. Several might well have moved in closer, or farther out, as the solar system formed.

If we could slice Venus and Earth in half, pole to pole, and place them side by side, they would look remarkably similar. Each planet has an iron core enveloped by a hot-rock mantle; the thinnest of skins forms a rocky, exterior crust. On both planets, this thin skin changes form and sometimes erupts into volcanoes in response to the ebb and flow of heat and pressure deep beneath. Other possible similarities will require further investigation — and perhaps another visit to a planet that has hosted many Earth probes, both in orbit and briefly on the surface.

Subduction is believed to be the first step in creating plate tectonics. Magellan saw a land of extreme volcanism. The orbiter saw a relatively young surface, one recently reshaped in geologic terms , and chains of towering mountains. The broiling surface of Venus has been a topic of heated discussion among planetary scientists. The traditional picture includes a catastrophic, planetwide resurfacing between and million years ago.

In other words, Venus appears to have completely erased most traces of its early surface. The causes: volcanic and tectonic forces, which could include surface buckling and massive eruptions. But newer estimates made with help from computer models paint a different portrait.

While the same forces would be at work, resurfacing would be piecemeal over an extended time. The average age of surface features could be as young as million years, with some older surfaces mixed in.

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