How Hot is Venus?

1 year on Earth is the length of time that it takes Earth to orbit the sun. Earth’s orbit takes just over 365 days (the ‘extra’ bit on top of the 365 days is why we have a leap year every four years, where an extra day is added onto February).

Uranus is much further away from the sun, and it takes 84.3 Earth years for Uranus to complete its orbit – this is one ‘year’ for Uranus. This means that Uranus is travelling around the sun at a speed of 15,290 miles per hour (24,607 km per hour).

The other planets also have different lengths in their years. For example, Mercury’s year is only 88 Earth days! This is the shortest orbit of all of the planets, which makes sense since Mercury is the closest planet to the sun (so it has a shorter distance to go).

You may be surprised to know that the lengths of the days on different planets also vary a lot, and some of them have days that are longer than their years! 1 day on Earth is 24 hours. This is the amount of time that it takes the Earth to rotate completely on its axis. Venus’ day is the equivalent of 243 Earth days, while it’s year is 225 Earth days. This means that Venus’ day is longer than it’s year! It is orbiting the sun faster than the time it takes to completely rotate on its axis.

On Uranus, a day takes nearly 18 Earth hours. This means that while Uranus’ day is shorter than Earth’s, its year is significantly longer! This means that Uranus is rotating very fast when compared to Earth, and orbiting the sun very slow (because it is so far away).

There are many other ways in which Uranus is different to Earth, such as gravity. If you could stand on Uranus (which you can’t, not least because Uranus is made of gas!), the gravity would be 89% as strong as the gravity on Earth. So if you weighed 100kg (or 100lb) on Earth, you would weigh 89kg (or 89lb) on Uranus. To give you an idea of what this would feel or look like, the gravity on the Moon is 83% as strong as Earth. So you would be slightly more ‘weighed down’ than you would be on the Moon. You may have seen videos or pictures of astronauts ‘bouncing’ on the Moon – you would be a little bit less bouncy than this on Uranus.