How can we see the sun and not see some other planets, like Venus despite them being closer to Earth than the sun is?

Question

I tried googling this, but I couldn’t understand what it meant, so can anyone here help me out?

In: Physics

Answer 1

The sun is very huge, and venus is way smaller. We can sometimes see venus as a speck if it’s in the right place and being illuminated by the sun well enough, but the sun is way more obvious because it is simply so big.

It’s like how you can see a big jet plane thousands of metres up in the sky, but you can’t see insects a few hundred meters up in the sky. The insects are way closer just like venus, but also way smaller.

The diameter of venus is 12,104 km. The diameter of the sun is 1.3927 million km.

Also, planets don’t give off light from nuclear fusion, they just reflect some of it so they’re duller.