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This article is written in British English with Oxford spelling (colour, realize, organization, analyse; note that -ize is used instead of -ise) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

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Date	Process	Result
November 11, 2004	Featured article candidate	Promoted
May 10, 2006	Featured article review	Demoted
June 16, 2006	Featured article candidate	Promoted
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January 8, 2008	Featured article review	Kept
August 27, 2008	Featured topic candidate	Not promoted
June 26, 2016	Featured article review	Kept
June 13, 2021	Featured topic removal candidate	Demoted
June 20, 2022	Featured topic candidate	Promoted
A news item involving this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "In the news" column on September 15, 2020.
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On 24 August 2023, it was proposed that this article be moved from Venus to Venus (planet). The result of the discussion was Not moved.

This page is not a forum for general discussion about Venus. Any such comments may be removed or refactored. Please limit discussion to improvement of this article. You may wish to ask factual questions about Venus at the Reference desk.

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Presence of Phosphine on Venus

The statement "By late October 2020, re-analysis of data with a proper subtraction of background did not result in the detection of phosphine" seems to have now itself been rendered outdated by the original team^[1] who has now found a smaller amount of phosphine but still seems to have found phosphine none the less. Maybe amending this section to say the status of phosphine is still uncertain considering the multiple contradictory analyses of the atmosphere are now available. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dmesco17 (talk • contribs)

References

^ Greaves, Jane. "Re-analysis of Phosphine in Venus' Clouds". arXiv. Retrieved 16 Nov 2020.

Phosphine is confirmed.

^[1] 21 Andromedae (talk) 18:08, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Clements, David L. (2024-09-20). Venus Phosphine: Updates and lessons learned. KAVLI-IAU SYMPOSIUM (IAUS 387). arXiv:2409.13438.

Paragraph on early spectroscopic observations is misleading

Hi!

I suggest removing or rewriting the paragraph about Slipher's 1903 observations:

"Spectroscopic observations in the 1900s (...) than had previously been thought".

It says his spectroscopic work gave early clues about Venus's rotation, but that's misleading. He was observing sunlight reflected off Venus's cloud tops in visible wavelengths (paper), so unknowingly, he wasn't observing the planet itself, just the upper atmosphere. So it not relevant to the actual planetary rotation.

And today we know those clouds rotate quickly (in 4-5 days, paper), not 225 days as inferred by Lowell from Slipher's null result. His observations likely missed something. Maybe because of this, modern literature doesn't really cover Slipher's observations.

I recommend removing the paragraph entirely? We could also try rephrasing it. But it would need to clearly explain that he only observed the fast-rotating cloud tops, so then, why keep a paragraph saying he detected slow rotation? LazyAssed Contender (talk) 09:42, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that you can delete that paragraph all together. It has a primary ref but I did not find significant other coverage. I used the other ref for a sentence in the Atmosphere section. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:36, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

[1] Greaves, Jane. "Re-analysis of Phosphine in Venus' Clouds". arXiv. Retrieved 16 Nov 2020.

[2] Clements, David L. (2024-09-20). Venus Phosphine: Updates and lessons learned. KAVLI-IAU SYMPOSIUM (IAUS 387). arXiv:2409.13438.

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