Why is Venus so WEIRD?!? First of all, it doesn't have a moon.
We know why Mercury doesn't have a moon - it's just too close to the sun for a moon to have a stable orbit. Venus is also close to the sun, but its gravity is strong enough to be able to hold a Moon. It's possible it did have one, but a number of collisions early in Venus's life could have sent the moon crashing into the planet.
The next thing that makes Venus weird is that its days can last longer than its years. It takes 243.025 Earth days for the planet to rotate once on its axis while it takes 224.7 Earth days to orbit the sun. But it's Solar Day, the time it takes for the Sun to return to the same point in the sky, works out to 116.75 Earth days.
It spins in a different direction from most other planets, including Earth, so that on Venus the sun rises in the west.
The mass of Venus's atmosphere is 93 times that of Earth - If it were possible for a human being to stand on the surface of Venus, they would be crushed by the atmosphere.
#astronomy #astrophotography
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