Venus is a rocky, terrestrial planet like Earth, and likely formed the same way at the same time. It has a mass of 4.87 trillion trillion kilograms, about 82 percent that of its sister planet.

Japan’s Himawari weather satellites, designed to watch Earth, have quietly delivered a decade of infrared snapshots of Venus.

"Venus has 100,000 times less water than the Earth, even though it's basically the same size and mass." When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s ...

Compared to that, Earth is way less harsh. So why are Earth and Venus called twins? It's because, Gilmore says, Venus, Earth and, even to some extent, Mars all started relatively the same.

For comparison, you can see what Earth looks like from Mars and what it looked like to NASA's Voyager 1 back in 1990. It helps put our place in the universe into perspective.