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Why is a Venus day longer than a Venus year?

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Venus is similar in size to Earth. Earth is just a little bit bigger. Venus is unusual because it spins the opposite direction of Earth and most other planets. And its rotation is very slow. It takes about 243 Earth days to spin around just once. Because it's so close to the sun, a year goes by fast. read more

If a year is defined as 1 orbit around the sun, and a day is defined as rotating once about a planets axis, then the reason a day on Venus is longer than a year on Venus is because Venus rotates about its axis very slowly. read more

Combined with its orbital period, the time it takes for the Sun to return to the same point in the sky works out to 116.75 Earth days, which is little more than a half a Venusian (or Cytherian) year. At a closest average distance of 41 million km (25,476,219 mi), Venus is the closest planet to Earth. read more