Venus
(more details below)
Size & Distance
* Venus is the second closest planet to the sun at a distance of about 67 million miles.
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* Diameter of 7,520 miles, Venus is roughly the same size as Earth — just slightly smaller.
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* It takes sunlight 6 minutes to travel from the Sun to Venus.
* If the sun were as tall as a typical front door, the Earth and Venus would each be about the size of a UK penny.
Geology
* Venus is in many ways similar to Earth in its structure. It has an iron core that is approximately 4,000 miles in diameter.
* Above that is a mantle made of hot rock slowly churning due to the planet's interior heat.
* The surface is a thin crust of rock that bulges and moves as Venus' mantle shifts and creates volcanoes.
Atmosphere / Weather
* This planet spins slowly and in the opposite direction from most planets.
* Venus' has a thick atmosphere consists mainly of carbon dioxide, with clouds of sulfuric acid droplets and it traps heat in a runaway greenhouse effect, making it the hottest planet in our solar system.
* The thick atmosphere traps the Sun's heat, resulting in surface temperatures higher than 880 degrees Fahrenheit (470 degrees Celsius).
* The atmosphere has many layers with different temperatures.
* At the level where the clouds are, about 30 miles up from the surface, it's about the same temperature as on the surface of the Earth.
Orbit & Rotation
* Venus makes a complete orbit around the Sun (a year in Venusian time) in 225 Earth days or slightly less than two Venusian day-night cycles as on Venus.
* One day-night cycle takes 117 Earth days because Venus rotates in the direction opposite of its orbital revolution around the Sun..
* Its orbit around the Sun is the most circular of any planet — nearly a perfect circle. Other planet's orbits are more elliptical, or oval-shaped.