100 Interesting Facts About Mercury

Facts About Mercury: Mercury is the first and smallest planet in the solar system. It is the closest planet to the Sun. It has no satellite. It orbits the sun once every 7 days. Its apparent brightness values range from -2.6 to +5.6. But it is not easy to see from Earth, because its biggest angular difference with the Sun is only 26.3 degrees. It is visible only in the dim light of morning and evening. The amount of data collected about the planet Mercury is relatively low. Mercury-bound spacecraft Mariner 10 Messenger conducted searches in 1974-1975 and Messenger conducted 4000 searches in 2004-2015.

In terms of physical properties, Mercury is very much like the moon because like the moon, this planet also has a lot of bass. The planet has no stable atmosphere, no natural satellites. It has a huge iron center. The magnetic field produced by this center is 0.1% stronger than the magnetic field of the earth. Mercury's surface temperature is between 90 and 600 Kelvin. The hottest place is the semi- solar point and the coldest place is the lower point of the shafts near its poles.

Mind Blowing Facts About Mercury

There are no seasons on Mercury.
Mercury is greyish-brown in color.
Mercury has seen only two guests from Earth.
Mercury’s equatorial circumference is 15,329 km.
Mercury is the second densest planet after Earth.
The name Mercury was actually given by the Romans.
The surface area of Mercury is 74,797,000 square km.
Only one Mercurian day passes in two Mercurian years.
Mercury’s surface is similar to that of Earth’s moon.
The volume of the Mercury is 60,827,208,742 cubic km.
Mercury is also a tectonically active planet like Earth.
The first map of the Mercurian surface was made in 2009.
Mercury has wrinkles on its surface called Lobate Scarps.
The surface temperature of Mercury is minus 173 to 427 °C.
Mercury completes one revolution around the Sun in 88 days.
Galileo Galilei observed Mercury for the first time in 1631.
The surface gravity of Mercury is 3.7 meter per second square.
The Density of the Mercury is 5.427 grams per cubic centimeter.
The first documented mention of Mercury is about 5,000 years old.

Fun Facts About Mercury for Kids

The volume of Mercury is 17.85 times less than the volume of Earth.
You can see Mercury from the surface of the Earth with the naked eye.
In April 2015, NASA’s spacecraft “MESSENGER” crash landed on Mercury.
The mass of the Mercury planet is 330,104,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg.
Your weight of the body on Mercury would be 38% of your weight on Earth.
The atmospheric constituents of Mercury are Nitrogen, Oxygen, and others.
It has an atmosphere, but it is incredibly thin. It consists of 42% oxygen.
Mercury’s surface has three significant features – craters, plains, and cliffs.
Day and night there last for one local year, which is equal to 176 standard days.
There are clouds at its poles sometimes. This phenomenon has not yet been studied.
Mercury and Venus are the only planets in the Solar System that do not have moons.
The inner metallic core of Mercury is iron while the external shell is a silicate.
Mercury’s orbit is elongated more than that of any other planet in the Solar System.
The outer shell of Mercury is merely 500 to 600 kilometers or 300 to 400 miles wide.
Mariner 10 is the first spacecraft to visit Mercury and he made a stunning discovery.
The least circular and the most eccentric orbit in the solar system belong to Mercury.
At an incredible speed of 180,000 km/h, it is the fastest planet to travel through space.
Mercury is one of the five planets in the solar system that are visible to the naked eye.
The rays of the sun are approximately seven times stronger on Mercury than they are on Earth.
Most of the Mercurian mountains are named with words that mean “mountain” in various languages.

Facts About Mercury for Kids

There is water ice on Mercury. It is found in craters near its poles, where sunlight never reaches.
Mercury travels around the sun at a speed of 180,000 kilometers per hour or 112,000 miles per hour.
The diameter of its core, according to scientists, is approximately equal to the diameter of the Moon.
A spacecraft needs to expend even more energy to get to Mercury than it takes to fly to the gas giants.
The core of Mercury isn’t solid like the core of Mars. Scientists believe it’s liquid like Earth’s one.
As per the analysis by the scientists, mercury has shrunken in size. It has lost 1.5 km of its diameter.
The iron content in the Mercurian core is higher than in the core of any other planet in the Solar System.
The thickness of the water ice layer on the dark areas of the surface of Mercury reaches 6 feet (2 meters).
Because of the weak gravitation of Mercury, the gases from its atmosphere constantly escape to outer space.
For an observer standing on the surface of Mercury, the Sun will look 3 times larger than it looks on Earth.
That’s impossible to conduct research on Mercury using orbiting telescopes because of its proximity to the Sun.
It’s unknown who discovered this planet and when it happened. People have known about Mercury since ancient times.
It becomes the closest planet to Earth, even closer than Venus and Mars, but from time to time only, and not for long.
Mercurian gravity is about three times lower than Earth’s, which is still two times more powerful than the Moon’s one.

Cool Facts About Mercury

When Mercury reaches near to Sun, on that time, if anyone can stand on Mercury, can see the sun at least 3 times bigger.
It has a comet-like tail extending 1.5 million miles (2.5 million km). But it is impossible to see it with the naked eye.
Mercury is the smallest planet in the Solar System. Even some gas giant moons are larger than it, such as Titan and Ganymede.
The core of mercury consists mainly of iron, like the Earth’s one, and it accounts for about 60% of the total planetary mass.
Mercury remains the least studied of all the inner planets. Although the least studied planet of the Solar System is Neptune.
Though the temperature on Mercury can reach up to 840°F during the day, this planet is still believed to have water ice on it.
Mercury’s magnetic field is about 100 times weaker than Earth’s, but still 5 times more powerful than the magnetic field of Mars.
Mercury was named after the eponymous God from the ancient Roman Pantheon, a fleet-footed youth. The ancient Greeks called him Hermes.
This planet was once subjected to a long and intense bombardment by comets and asteroids. The bombardment lasted about 1.8 billion years.
There was a theory about the presence of another planet, Vulcan, between Mercury and the Sun. Research has shown that it isn’t there after all.
Mercury is also called a morning or an evening star due to it is brightly visible in the sky just before the sunrise and just after the sunset.
The surface of the first planet from the Sun is very similar to the surface of the Moon — the same plains and mountains dotted with impact craters.
According to one theory, mercury was about 2.25 times more massive in the past, but a collision with another celestial body tore off its planetary crust.

Weird Facts About Mercury

The temperature difference on the surface of Mercury reaches 600 K depending on the time of day. This is more than on any other planet in the Solar System.
The soil temperature here is stable at a depth of 3 feet (1 meter), despite its monstrous differences on the surface. The temperature is about 167 °F (75 °C).
Amateur astronomers can observe the transit of this planet across the solar disk from time to time. In the XXI century, there were and will be 14 such transits.
The largest crater caused by the impact on Mercury is the Caloris Basin. This crater is 1,550 km in diameter and was discovered by the Mariner 10 probe in 1974.
Previously, there was a theory that mercury was once a moon of Venus but then changed its orbit due to some cataclysm. This theory is considered untenable nowadays.
The largest crater here measures approximately 947 by 817 miles (1525 by 1315 km), it is called Caloris Planitia. This is the largest object on the Mercurian surface.
Mercury is believed to have significant reserves of helium-3, already found on the Moon. This element will become the main source of energy for humanity in the future.
There were powerful volcanic eruptions here that formed huge lava fields billions of years ago. However, there isn’t even a single active volcano on this planet anymore.
The highest point of Mercury’s surface lies at an altitude of 13,000 feet (4.48 km) above the local “sea level”, which is taken simply as the average level of surface height.
There are craters on the Mercurian surface named after people who have made significant contributions to various Humanities, from poetry and music to philosophy and painting.

Quick Facts About Mercury

The first landing of an unmanned probe on Mercury is planned for the 30s of the XXI century. It should be implemented within the framework of the Russian project “Mercury-P”.
There is no change of seasons, despite the fact that at the point closest to the star (perihelion), Mercury is 1.5 times closer to the Sun than at the farthest point (aphelion).
The lowest point on the surface of this planet lies 16,400 feet (5,38 km) below the average level. It’s called the Rachmaninoff crater, in honor of the great Russian & American composer.
Mercury was considered as two different planets in various ancient cultures, one of which was observed in the morning and the other in the evening, so it was given two names instead of one.
Despite its proximity to the Sun, Mercury isn’t the hottest planet in our system. The first place in this category belongs to Venus, which is even hotter due to the dense atmosphere and the powerful greenhouse effect.
Its core is larger in relation to the volume of the planet (about 83%) than that of any other celestial body in the Solar System. In terms of density, it ranks second among all the planets, slightly behind Earth only.
Mercury seems to make loops in the sky to an observer on the surface of the Earth. For an observer on the Mercurian surface, the Sun behaves similarly. This is a consequence of the combination of the axial and orbital motion of this planet.
The perihelion of this planet’s orbit is constantly shifting. Newtonian mechanics is not able to explain this, and there are probably effects of General relativity. Mercury is located very close to the Sun, and the effect of such a monstrous gravity on the distortion of physical laws hasn’t been studied yet.
The first artificial satellite of this planet was the Messenger research probe, which arrived at the Mercurian orbit in 2011. In 2014, Messenger ran out of fuel, and in 2015, it crashed into Mercury due to the inability to correct the orbit. The probe took and transmitted more than 277,000 photos to Earth during its operation.
The colonization of Mercury is being considered for the future, and it is believed that the same methods will be suitable for it as for the colonization of the Moon. The advantage of having a settlement on this planet is obvious – unlimited energy derived from the sunlight. Colonies can be located at the poles, in craters where there is no direct sunlight, but there are deposits of water ice.

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