Is a day on Venus really longer than a year? Yes. NASA figures show Venus takes 243 Earth days to spin once and 225 to orbit the Sun.
On Venus, one day lasts longer than one year. It sounds like a riddle, but it is right there in NASA's numbers.
Venus is the second planet from the Sun and Earth's closest planetary neighbour. It also turns very, very slowly.
The numbers
NASA's Venus Fact Sheet, kept by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, lists:
- One spin on its axis: 5,832.6 hours. That is about 243 Earth days (our math: 5,832.6 divided by 24).
- One trip around the Sun: 224.7 days. That is about 225 Earth days.
So Venus finishes a whole lap of the Sun before it has turned around once. As NASA puts it, your "day" on Venus "would be 243 Earth days long, longer even than a Venus year (one trip around the Sun), which takes only 225 Earth days."
It spins the other way
Venus also spins backward compared with Earth. The fact sheet gives its rotation period as a negative number (minus 5,832.6 hours), which is how astronomers mark a backward, or retrograde, spin. NASA says that means "the Sun would rise in the west and set in the east."
Sunrise to sunrise is a different number
There is one more twist. Because Venus is moving around the Sun while it slowly turns the other way, the time from one sunrise to the next is shorter than one spin. The fact sheet's "length of day" for Venus is 2,802 hours, about 117 Earth days (our math: 2,802 divided by 24 is 116.75).
So which is "a day"? If you mean one full spin, it is 243 Earth days and longer than the year. If you mean sunrise to sunrise, it is about 117 Earth days, a bit more than half a Venus year.
A few more Venus facts
- Average surface temperature: 464 degrees Celsius, according to the fact sheet. NASA calls Venus the hottest planet in our solar system.
- Surface pressure: 92 bars. Earth's is about 1 bar (1,014 millibars on NASA's Earth fact sheet), so Venus's air presses down about 90 times harder (our math).
- Moons: none.
Sources
- NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive, Venus Fact Sheet, last updated January 11, 2024.
- NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive, Earth Fact Sheet, for the Earth surface pressure.
- NASA Science, Venus: Facts, last updated October 15, 2026.
