What would a terraformed Venus that doesn't have a sped-up rotation or orbital mirrors look like?
TLDR Which Picture of Venus down below do you think would be more acurate?
My preferable idea for a terraformed Venus comes from this specific part of Wikipedia's Terraforming of Venus page. Which basically says that Venus wouldn't necessarily have to have a rotation speed that meets the rotation speed of Earth or Mars for humans to live there. And actually, not doing so would give Venus a unique seasonal system, whereas if the rotation speed is sped up or orbital mirrors are used to simulate rotational speeds, there wouldn't be any seasons like Earth and Mars.
Basically, the low rotation speed will create a massive amount of water evaporation, which in turn would form thick clouds that shield Venus from being completely roasted on one side. and at the same time those clouds would stabilize temperatures across the planet so the night side doesn't literally freeze everyone.
This system has the cool side effect of giving Venus a unique seasonal / calendar system, where the day side is constantly a bright summer with plenty of rain, and the night side is constantly dark and snowy. And for the morning side there would be a short spring, while the evening side has a short fall.
Now, this vison of a terraformed Venus is something I've only really seen on that Wikipedia page. So, it's hard to do more research on what that potential version of Venus would look like. But there are two ideas from what I thought up and seen, and I'm wondering which is more likely to be the case.
The first is this image on the wiki page, the description under the image says "Artist's conception of a terraformed Venus. The cloud formations are depicted assuming the planet's rotation has not been accelerated.", which makes me think that this is supposed to depict the unique terraforming plan I described, rather than one where orbital mirrors are used.
The second here is that same image but I quickly scribbled over it to show how I've been imagining what Venus would actually look like under this plan. My idea has been that the thick clouds they are talking about kind of cover almost the entirety of the day side of Venus. And because Venus rotates so slowly, its hard to imagine that the clouds would also move all that much. I imagine that this cloud formation would make Venus look similar to how it is now, however the clouds would only really cover half the planet.
I imagine this kind of ending up being a kind of cycle. During the Morning/Spring, You will be able to see the sun at sunrise, but as time goes on the long exposure of that little sliver of land to the sun will heat up the water and ocean to the point that those thick clouds form and that's when we get into summer. With summer being pretty hot but cloudy, I imagine there will be a constant cycle of evaporation and rain which makes it so the rain isn't super heavy but rather more like a light sprinkling.
Eventually when Fall comes around the sun will set and the clouds start disappearing as there will now be more rain and snow than there will be evaporation. And when winter comes there will be a lot less clouds and the night sky will be mostly clear throughout winter.
That's how I've been imagining this but I'm not sure how accurate it is compared to the first picture, so that's what I'm wanting to know. Sorry this may have been a bit long.
Posted May 6, 2026, 11:23 PM UTC