A day on Venus lasts longer than its year

Added: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]A day on Venus lasts longer than the entire year on Venus. The planet rotates so slowly that one full spin on its axis takes 243 Earth days, while it orbits the Sun in just 225.

[00:00:15]So, if you stood on its surface and watched the Sun rise and set once, more than a full Venusian year would have already passed. The leading explanation for the slow spin is that ancient impacts and the planet's enormously thick atmosphere have been gradually breaking its rotation for billions of years. Venus is also the only planet in the solar system that spins backward.

[00:00:39]The Sun there rises in the west and sets in the east on the rare occasions you can see through the clouds at all. So, out there at the planet we keep mistaking for a sister to Earth,