LIVE SCIENCE - Given that it's the closest planet to the sun, Mercury seems like it should be the hottest planet in our solar system.
However, at a blistering 900 degrees Fahrenheit (480 degrees Celsius), Venus tops Mercury's 800 F (430 C) highest surface temperature, despite being an average of 31 million miles (50 million kilometers) farther from the sun. So how can the second planet from our star be hotter than the closest planet to it?
It all comes down to reflectivity, atmospheric composition and geological history, experts told Live Science.
A planet's distance from its star is not the only factor that influences the planet's temperature.
"Distance tells us how much sunlight arrives at a planet, but it does not tell us how much is reflected … absorbed, how efficiently heat escapes, or how effectively the atmosphere transports heat around the planet," Stephen Kane, an astrophysicist who studies planetary habitability at the University of California, Riverside, told Live Science in an email. "Those properties can be just as important as distance, and sometimes much more important."