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Venus is the second-closest planet to the Sun orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. It is the brightest natural object in the night sky, except for the Moon, reaching an apparent magnitude of minus 4.6. Because Venus is an inferior planet, from Earth it never appears to venture far from the Sun: its elongation reaches a maximum of 47.8 degrees. Venus is covered with an opaque layer of highly reflective clouds of carbon dioxide, preventing its surface from being seen from space in visible light; this was a subject of great speculation until some of its secrets were revealed by planetary science in the twentieth century. Venus has the densest atmosphere of all the terrestrial planets, consisting mostly of carbon dioxide. The atmospheric pressure at the planet's surface is 90 times that of the Earth.
