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If Venus's pass across the sun earlier this week yields a bounty of information for hunters of transiting worlds in other planetary systems, it's because Venus is a known entity. Studying the June 5 Venus transit as if it were a faraway exoplanet "gives us a reality check," says planetary physicist Colin Wilson of the University of Oxford. "We can check on all those exoplanet techniques to see how accurate they really are." Such data may enhance NASA's Kepler mission as well as the many ground-based campaigns using planetary transits to identify distant worlds, a method that has led to the discovery or characterization of more than 200 exoplanets.

By Eric Hand and Nature magazine Venus would seem to be a tempting destination for planetary probes: conveniently close, and an extreme laboratory for atmospheric processes familiar on Earth. So why won't NASA send a mission there

Two-time champion Venus Williams dropped out of the U.S.

Pluto may not be a full-fledged planet anymore, but it's got its share of moons. Including a tiny moon just recently spotted by astronomers.

Venus is Earth's closest sibling, in terms of size and proximity, but it remains relatively little explored compared with Earth's other planetary neighbor, Mars. For instance, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) currently have three working Mars orbiters and one active Mars rover between them, whereas at Venus, ESA's Venus Express spacecraft has the place to itself