What if sunrise only came once a year — and in the wrong direction?
Imagine watching the Sun crawl up over the western horizon. That is your morning on Venus. The planet spins backwards compared to almost everything else in the solar system, so east and west are swapped. And it spins extraordinarily slowly — one full rotation takes about 243 Earth days. Its orbit around the Sun takes only around 225. So Venus completes an entire trip around the Sun before it has even finished a single day. A year ticks by before dawn becomes dusk. On top of that, its dense atmosphere traps so much heat that the surface sits at around 465 degrees Celsius — hotter than Mercury, despite being farther from the Sun. Venus looks calm and bright in our sky. The reality is something else entirely. Follow Deep Field Vault for more of the universe, one astonishing fact at a time.