About 44 lightning bolts flash through the skies of Earth every second. And for a while, it seemed there might be more flashes than that on Venus.

Telescopes on Earth and spacecraft in orbit saw flashes of light in the planet’s clouds, or heard the sounds of lightning in the planet’s radio waves. One estimate said Venus could see several times more lightning bolts than Earth.

But studies in recent years have suggested that lightning on Venus might be quite rare.

Venus has a much thicker atmosphere than Earth does, topped by clouds of sulfuric acid. But there’s very little water vapor in the clouds. And water is a key ingredient for lightning on Earth and other worlds where it’s been confirmed. So that led to some skepticism about claims of lightning on Venus from early on.

A Sun-watching spacecraft has swung close to Venus several times. It’s listened for radio waves like those produced by lightning on Earth. It found them. But they were headed in the wrong direction – toward the ground, not into space, as they are on Earth.

And a Venus orbiter has spent hundreds of hours looking for lightning flashes, but hasn’t seen a thing. In fact, one recent study said some of the flashes seen from Earth might really be meteors burning up in Venus’s atmosphere. So lightning might be rare on our neighboring planet.

Venus is the bright “morning star.” Tomorrow, it’s close to the crescent Moon.

Script by Damond Benningfield