Why does venus have the hottest temperature

The global maps show the colorful splotches and ba InSight's landing site is Elysium Planitia, a flat, smooth plain selected not for its surface features, but for safety considerations.

InSight's purpose is to study the interior of Mars, not the su Saturn's auroras glow when energetic el Dance of Saturn's auroras. Artist's concept of our solar system showing a sense of scale and distance. Solar System Scales Artist's Concept. Enceladus' plume was found to have a comet-like chemistry by Cassini's Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer during its fly-through of the plume on Mar.

Water vapor, methane, carbon monoxide, Comets and Enceladus — Similar Chemistry. Cassini scientists know some of the thousands of images from the spacecraft's journey stand apart. With this feature they present the Cassini Images Hall of Fame. Cassini Images Hall of Fame. Version B of the asteroids installment of our solar system poster series.

Asteroids Poster - Version B. These flags illustrate the international scope of the Cassini program. At its orbital distance, Venus receives nearly twice as much energy from the Sun as does Earth. Alternatively, if we were to swap Earth with Venus, the surface of our sister planet would be somewhat above F C on average, akin to being inside a very hot oven.

Venus cools even more as it moves farther away from the Sun. At those temperatures, any surface water could only be present as ice. However, Venus likely lost any surface water it had in that ancient runaway greenhouse effect. Thus, even Venus can become chillingly cold if located far enough away from the Sun. Receive news, sky-event information, observing tips, and more from Astronomy's weekly email newsletter. View our Privacy Policy.

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RISE —. PHASE —. So not only does Mercury receive four times as much energy-per-unit-area, it absorbs nearly nine times as much of the sunlight it receives as Venus does! State and NASA. Yet if you saw two close-up pictures of the recent transits of Mercury last month and Venus in , you'd notice that the Sun appears to "curve" around Venus, while there's no such effect on Mercury. This is because of the fourth and all-important difference between the two worlds: Mercury has no atmosphere, while Venus has a very thick one.

Transits of Venus top and Mercury bottom across the edge of the Sun. Note how Venus' atmosphere For airless Mercury, all of that heat goes immediately back into space. But on Venus, the story is different. Each quantum of infrared radiation -- the re-radiated heat -- has got to get through that thick, thick atmosphere, which is difficult. Ultraviolet image of Venus' clouds as seen by the Pioneer Venus Orbiter. Image credit: NASA. Not only does Venus possess an atmosphere many times the thickness of Earth's, loaded with huge amounts of infrared-absorbing gases like carbon dioxide, but it's shrouded in terrifically thick layers of highly reflective clouds.

The long nights provide no escape from the heat, as the trapping and thermalizing effects of the cloud layers keep the surface of Venus at an inhospitably high temperature, so much so that if you added up the operational time of every lander that ever touched down on Venus' surface, it wouldn't even sum to half an Earth-day. The very cold, polar regions of the Earth have a mean temperature far below the rest of the planet But in the right amounts, atmospheric heat-trapping can be the best thing ever to happen to a world.

The blanket-like effect of the clouds and atmospheric gases lift our planet's climate into the temperate zone where life-as-we-know it has thrived for so long.

Yet early in the Solar System's history, with a cooler Sun and a much thinner atmosphere, Venus was probably similar in temperature to Earth's today. It likely had the same potential for life and biological processes, but a runaway catastrophe created the permanent inferno that's inhabited our sister world for billions of years.

While Earth isn't at risk of the same fate, Venus stands as both the hottest world in our Solar System and a cautionary tale of an out-of-control greenhouse effect. It takes only 88 Earth days to complete an orbit but Earth days to rotate once around its axis. On the other hand, Venus resides million kilometres from the sun, takes Earth days to complete an orbit at twice the distance from the sun as Mercury, and absorbs only 2.

There is also a lack of water in the Venusian atmosphere, which is very different from Earth. The atmospheric pressure is so high on Venus that no spacecraft landing there has lasted more than an hour. The high pressures led to an increase in temperatures, creating a runaway greenhouse effect similar to global warming on Earth, only much worse. On the surface, the environment remains very hot and dry. The most abundant gas is carbon dioxide CO2 , accounting for The next major gas is nitrogen N2 at 3.

Traces of sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, argon, and neon make up 0. Venus, like all planets, started out with an atmosphere containing hydrogen and helium.