Home Reference The Solar System

Fun facts and trivia about the solar system, including the sun, the planets, and other celestial bodies.

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Venus - Beautiful but Deadly

Venus was named after the Roman goddess of beauty; not surprising, considering that it is the brightest of all the planets in the night sky.
Though it is quite beautiful, Venus is also quite deadly; its atmosphere contains clouds of sulfuric acid, a very corrosive substance.
Even though it is not closest to the sun, Venus is the hottest of all the planets. This is likely the result of an extreme case of greenhouse effect
Venus has the proud distinction of having the opposite direction spin from all the other planets (though Uranus has an odd spin of its own!)
Would you like to live on a planet with days that are longer than its years? That's right! A year on Venus is 225 of our days, but its day is 243 of our days!
Venus is the setting for C. S. Lewis's science fiction novel Perelandra ("Perelandra" was the name given to Venus by its inhabitants) !

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"The Solar System" is written by Douglas Twitchell, and hosted at The Problem Site.

Contents copyright 2009 by Douglas Twitchell. Contents of this page may not be reproduced without permission of the author. For information on using this site in a classroom situation, please visit the Teachers page.