Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun . Mercury is slightly smaller in diameter than the moons Ganymede and Titan but more than twi...
Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun. Mercury is slightly smaller in diameter than the moons Ganymede and Titan but more than twice as massive.
Planet Profile
Distance to Earth- 48 million miles
History of Mercury
History of Mercury. In Roman mythology Mercury is the god of commerce, travel and thievery, the Roman counterpart of the Greek god Hermes, the messenger of the Gods. The planet probably received this name because it moves so quickly across the sky.
Mercury has been known since at least the time of the Sumerians (3rd millennium BC). It was sometimes given separate names for its apparitions as a morning star and as an evening star. Greek astronomers knew, however, that the two names referred to the same body. Heraclitus even believed that Mercury and Venus orbit the Sun, not the Earth.
Mercury is the planet nearest the Sun. Apart from those comets and asteroids at the perihelion of very elliptical orbits, only dust and very small bits are thought to orbit the Sun closer than Mercury. Anything nearer the Sun than Mercury can only be seen if the Sun is eclipsed.
Because Mercury is nearer the Sun than our planet, we can only see it as a crescent or gibbous (more than half but less than full), because when its fully lit side is facing us, it is behind the Sun and cannot be seen. This is called superior conjunction, and when it is between us and the Sun, it cannot be seen as its dark side is towards us. This is called inferior conjunction. When Mercury is near superior conjunction it is gibbous, when it is near inferior conjunction it is a crescent. Mercury can be seen either just before dawn or just after sunset, near the horizon. It is too near the Sun for it to be safe to look at it through a telescope.
Geography
Mercury's surface resembles that of Earth's moon, scarred by many impact craters resulting from collisions with meteoroids and comets. ... Mercury is the second smallest planet in the solar system, larger only than Pluto.
surface
The surface of Mercury, at first glance, looks very much like that of the Moon, but in fact it is different in several ways. The MESSENGER spacecraft revealed that Mercury has some unique landforms, more smooth plains, and surface compositions (low in iron and high in sulfur) that are unlike any measured on the Moon.
The surface of Mercury has numerous interesting features, including a variety of craters, ridges, and terrains ranging from heavily cratered to nearly crater free. These features, and their location across the known planet surface, helps us to understand the evolution of the planet.
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