Planets Facts

Venus rotates clockwise, the opposite direction of most planets in our solar system, and so slowly that a day on Venus is longer than its year.

Jupiter is bigger than all the other planets combined.

The Earth weighs around 6,600,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons (5,940 billion billion metric tons)!

The Earth weighs approximately 6.58 sextillion tons (6,580,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons).

Jupiter emits powerful radio bursts that amateur astronomers can detect with a simple shortwave radio antenna, making it one of the few planets you can 'listen' to from Earth.

Earth is the only planet in our solar system that's not named after a god or goddess.

It 'snows' metal on Venus.

Jupiter produces lightning bolts up to 1,000 times more powerful than anything on Earth, generated by towering clouds of ammonia and water that don't exist anywhere else in the solar system. NASA's Juno spacecraft discovered that ammonia vapour melts high-altitude ice crystals on Jupiter, creating an exotic 'antifreeze' cloud system that generates these extreme electrical discharges.

Every other planet in the solar system can fit between Earth and the Moon — with roughly 4,400 km to spare.