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Last Post 10/23/2018 9:52 AM by  Christina Cohen
Sunrise on Venus
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Jamil B





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10/23/2018 8:44 AM
    How come the sun rises in the WEST on Venus? My Snapple cap said this is true and I can't figure it out. ;-)
    Tags: Venus, solar system, sunrise

    Christina Cohen



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    10/23/2018 9:52 AM
    Yeah, Venus is an odd duck. Unlike Earth (and all the other planets except for Uranus, which is almost lying on its side in terms of spinning), Venus rotates clockwise (as viewed from above the planet). So, on Venus the Sun appears first (sunrise) in the west and then sets in the east, opposite of what it does on Earth.

    Since this rotation is opposite to the direction that the planet is orbiting the Sun (at least in this regard, Venus goes with flow - all the planets orbit the Sun counter-clockwise as viewed from above the Sun's north pole), it is called retrograde rotation. The other thing that's interesting about Venus' rotation is that it is really slow. Venus takes 243 Earth days to rotated once which is actually longer than it takes Venus to orbit the Sun.
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