Dante's view aside (which described the world below as an ice-pit), no place in the solar system is more like the popular image of Hell than the planet named for the Goddess of Love. Beneath those shiny, beautiful clouds is a surface with a temperature of nearly 500 degrees centigrade - the melting point of lead. And speaking of fire and brimstone - the atmosphere contains high amounts of sulfuric acid. If you like volcanoes and desolate, lifeless and rocky landscapes, Venus is definitely for you. Venusian volcanoes are as high as Mount Everest. Craters on the Venusian surface are nothing short of awesome - the Mead craters alone measures 280 kilometers across, making Arizona's popular "Meteor Crater" puny in comparison.

The most unusual feature of Venus, however, is the fact that it is the only planet known to rotate in retrograde fashion - clockwise, as seen from the north. This means that, were you to see the sun from the surface, it would rise in the West and set in the East. Incidentally, if you suffer from insomnia - or like Alaska in the summer - you'll enjoy yearlong days on Venus. Daylight lasts over 6,000 hours (equilavent to 225 Earth days) - longer than it takes Venus to complete a single orbit of the sun.