Venus
12,104 kmacross
Venus is 12,104 km across (1.1× narrower than Earth) and orbits the Sun at 0.72 AU — about 107,710,466 km. Sunlight takes 6.0 minutes to reach it. Earth’s twin in size, smothered in a runaway greenhouse of carbon dioxide and sulphuric-acid cloud.
▶ Visit Venus in 3D
What kind of world is it?
Venus is what happens when a greenhouse effect runs away completely. Although Mercury is closer to the Sun, Venus is hotter — its dense CO₂ atmosphere traps heat so effectively that the surface stays around 464 °C day and night, pole to equator. It rotates backwards so slowly that its day is longer than its year, and its cloud deck rains sulphuric acid that evaporates before it lands.
Surface pressure is ~92× Earth’s — like standing 900 m underwater — and it’s hot enough to melt lead. Venus also spins backwards.
Venus by the numbers
Diameter
12,104 km
Distance from the Sun
0.72 AU
Sunlight travel time
6.0 minutes
Surface gravity
8.9 m/s²
Temperature
464 °C average
A day lasts
243 Earth days
A year lasts
225 Earth days
Known moons
0
Numbers only get you so far. The distances are the part nobody's brain handles — in the interactive view, switch to 1:1 scale and watch Venus shrink to an honest speck on an enormous empty orbit.
Keep going
✓ Facts verified July 2026
Every figure on this page is a real, rounded value checked against primary sources. Found something out of date? See how we keep it accurate.