• Question: what is the hottest planet? (not including the sun)

    Asked by Abi_256 to Kate, Pip, Reka on 17 Nov 2016. This question was also asked by Avanti2005.
    • Photo: Pip Millington

      Pip Millington answered on 17 Nov 2016:

      The hottest planet in the solar system is Venus, the second planet from the Sun. A quick search tells me that the average temperature is about 462 degrees Celsius.

      I always find this a bit counter-intuitive. Mercury is the nearest planet to the thing which makes all the heat but it turns out that Venus is hotter because it has a dense atmosphere of chemicals which traps a lot of the Sun’s heat on the planet, whereas Mercury has virtually no atmosphere.

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