Venus takes longer to turn once than to orbit the Sun.

Why Venus’s Sun rises in the west

On Earth, the planet rotates eastward, so the Sun appears to travel across the sky from east to west. Venus turns the other way. Its retrograde rotation—a spin opposite the direction most planets follow—makes the Sun appear to move from west to east instead.

“Clockwise” depends on where you look from: astronomers define the direction by viewing the planets from above the Sun’s north side. From that shared viewpoint, Venus spins opposite Earth and most of its planetary neighbors.

A rotation that outlasts a year

Venus takes about 243 Earth days to complete one turn relative to distant stars, but only about 225 days to orbit the Sun. That makes its sidereal rotation—the time for a full spin against the background stars—longer than its year.

There is a further twist: a Venusian solar day, from one noon to the next, lasts about 117 Earth days. The Sun’s apparent motion depends on both the planet’s spin and its progress around the Sun, so a “day” measured by the Sun overhead is not the same as one complete rotation against the stars.

How Venus came to spin backward

The origin of Venus’s unusual rotation is not settled. Its direction and extreme slowness may reflect a combination of influences over the planet’s history, including interactions with the Sun and the atmosphere, or a major early impact. Those possibilities remain explanations under investigation, not a single confirmed account.

The result is a striking calendar: Venus completes an orbit before it completes one full spin, while the interval between successive noons is shorter than either.