Why is Venus hotter than Mercury, when Mercury is closer to the sun?

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.

Totally different atmospheres 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." Mercury makes the case in miniature.

According to Kane, the planet has essentially no atmosphere, so incoming sunlight strikes bare rock directly, heating it to extreme temperatures during the day.

But with barely anything overhead to trap that warmth, Mercury radiates it straight back into space the moment the sun sets.

As a result, nighttime temperatures plunge from roughly 800 F (430 C) during the day to about minus 290 F (minus 180 C) at night ‪—‬ a swing of well over 1,000 degrees , he added.

Venus tells the opposite story.

Wrapped in an atmosphere that's roughly 90 times as dense as Earth's and consists almost entirely of carbon dioxide, Venus traps heat so effectively that its surface temperature barely changes at all, no matter where the sun happens to be, Kane explained.

A permanent blanket Venus' thick, sulfuric-acid clouds reflect roughly three-quarters of incoming sunlight back into space. (Image credit: NASA / Handout via Getty, NASA / Handout via Getty) Sunlight arrives at a planet mostly as near-infrared radiation and visible light , which pass through atmospheres consisting primarily of gases such as nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide with relatively little trouble.

Once the ground and lower atmosphere absorb that energy, though, they re-release it as infrared radiation , the kind of energy we feel as heat.

Carbon dioxide happens to be excellent at grabbing and holding on to infrared radiation, Kane noted.