Size and distance

With a radius of 3,760 miles (6,052 kilometers), Venus is roughly the same size as Earth — just slightly smaller.

From an average distance of 67 million miles (108 million kilometers), Venus is 0.7 astronomical units away from the Sun. One astronomical unit (abbreviated as AU), is the dista...

Mercury's highly eccentric, egg-shaped orbit takes the planet as close as 29 million miles (47 million kilometers) and as far as 43 million miles (70 million kilometers) from the Sun. It speeds around the Sun every 88 days, traveling through space at nearly 29 miles (47 kilometers) per second, fa...

The red planet is actually many colors. At the surface, we see colors as brown, gold, and tan. The reason Mars looks reddish is due to oxidization—or rusting—of iron in the rocks, regolith (Martian “soil”), and dust of Mars. This dust gets kicked up into the atmosphere and from a distance makes t...