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Mercury Planet

Mercury is the smallest planet in the Solar System and orbits the Sun the fastest of all planets, taking just 88 days. It is named after the Roman god Mercury. Mercury orbits very close to the Sun within Earth's orbit and can only be seen just after sunset or before sunrise. It rotates in a unique way where it rotates three times for every two revolutions around the Sun. Mercury has no atmosphere and surface temperatures vary greatly from 100K at night to 700K during the day. It has been geologically inactive for billions of years and is heavily cratered.

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112 views1 page

Mercury Planet

Mercury is the smallest planet in the Solar System and orbits the Sun the fastest of all planets, taking just 88 days. It is named after the Roman god Mercury. Mercury orbits very close to the Sun within Earth's orbit and can only be seen just after sunset or before sunrise. It rotates in a unique way where it rotates three times for every two revolutions around the Sun. Mercury has no atmosphere and surface temperatures vary greatly from 100K at night to 700K during the day. It has been geologically inactive for billions of years and is heavily cratered.

Uploaded by

Mihail Mihail
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as TXT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Mercury is the smallest and innermost planet in the Solar System.

Its orbit around


the Sun takes 87.97 Earth days, the shortest of all the planets in the Solar
System. It is named after the Greek god Hermes (Ερμής), translated into Latin
Mercurius Mercury, god of commerce, messenger of the gods, mediator between gods
and mortals.

Like Venus, Mercury orbits the Sun within Earth's orbit as an inferior planet, and
its apparent distance from the Sun as viewed from Earth never exceeds 28°. This
proximity to the Sun means the planet can only be seen near the western horizon
after sunset or eastern horizon before sunrise, usually in twilight. At this time,
it may appear as a bright star-like object, but is often far more difficult to
observe than Venus. The planet telescopically displays the complete range of
phases, similar to Venus and the Moon, as it moves in its inner orbit relative to
Earth, which recurs over its synodic period of approximately 116 days.

Mercury rotates in a way that is unique in the Solar System. It is tidally locked
with the Sun in a 3:2 spin–orbit resonance,[16] meaning that relative to the fixed
stars, it rotates on its axis exactly three times for every two revolutions it
makes around the Sun.[a][17] As seen from the Sun, in a frame of reference that
rotates with the orbital motion, it appears to rotate only once every two Mercurian
years. An observer on Mercury would therefore see only one day every two Mercurian
years.

Mercury's axis has the smallest tilt of any of the Solar System's planets (about
1⁄30 degree). Its orbital eccentricity is the largest of all known planets in the
Solar System;[b] at perihelion, Mercury's distance from the Sun is only about two-
thirds (or 66%) of its distance at aphelion. Mercury's surface appears heavily
cratered and is similar in appearance to the Moon's, indicating that it has been
geologically inactive for billions of years. Having almost no atmosphere to retain
heat, it has surface temperatures that vary diurnally more than on any other planet
in the Solar System, ranging from 100 K (−173 °C; −280 °F) at night to 700 K (427
°C; 800 °F) during the day across the equatorial regions.[18] The polar regions are
constantly below 180 K (−93 °C; −136 °F). The planet has no known natural
satellites.

Two spacecraft have visited Mercury: Mariner 10 flew by in 1974 and 1975; and
MESSENGER, launched in 2004, orbited Mercury over 4,000 times in four years before
exhausting its fuel and crashing into the planet's surface on April 30, 2015.[19]
[20][21] The BepiColombo spacecraft is planned to arrive at Mercury in 2025.

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