A terrestrial planet is a planet which has solid surfaces and is primarily composed of silicate racks and/or metals. There are 4 known terrestrial planets in our solar system – Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, which are all inner planets and one terrestrial dwarf planet, Ceres, located in the asteroid belt. These planets share similar characteristics such as proximity to the soon, few or no moons, absence of planetary rings such as Saturn’s, relatively weaker magnetic fields and closely spaced [...]

Planet Mercury is the planet that is considered as the closest to the sun and orbits the star for about an average distance of 57.9 million km. It can make a complete trip around the sun for a period of 88 days. Now that Planet Pluto is already referred to as a dwarf planet, Mercury has already been tagged as the smallest planet present within our solar system. Its diameter is only measured at about 4879.4 km but despite the [...]

Mercury is the planet that is closest to the sun. It is also the smallest. These two factors make it hard for experts to thoroughly probe Mercury. So far, only two spacecrafts have flown to Mercury to collect data: the Mariner 10 during the 1970s and the MESSENGER spacecraft in 2008. Still, even with these two probes, there hasn’t been a complete mapping of Mercury. The MESSENGER will return in 2011 to map the planet’s entirety, only no one knows [...]

Mercury, the smallest planet in the Solar system, is classified as a terrestrial planet along with Earth, Venus, and Mars. The surfaces of these terrestrial planets are composed of silicate rocks and these planets are classified in a group called inner planets. Mercury and other inner terrestrial planets are made up a metallic core with a surrounding silicate mantle. Mercury has canyons, craters, mountains and even volcanoes. Some are active. The planet does not have an active hydrosphere which cannot [...]

Mercury is the planet closest to the sun and is the smallest planet in the solar system. It is so small that some natural satellites exceed its size like Jupiter’s Ganymede and Saturn’s Titan. However, Mercury possesses more mass than both Ganymede and Titan. Despite its size, it is only second to Earth in density making it the 2nd densest planet on the solar system.

The Solar System’s smallest and innermost planet is Mercury, named after the messenger and god of trade in Roman mythology (also known as Hermes in Greek mythology). Being the innermost planet, probing and observing Mercury is difficult, although it has been done. In fact, Mercury is actually part of the five classical planets, together with Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. This means that during the ancient times, people already knew it existed (since they were visible from the Earth).

The atmosphere of Mercury is a tenuous exosphere that contains varying elements. The elements contained in Mercury’s exosphere are helium, hydrogen, oxygen, sodium, calcium, potassium and water vapor. The comet-like tail that is seen on the end of the planet is created by atmospheric gasses that are pushed by solar light. Sodium is the primary element located in its tail. Mercury’s tail extends very far from the planet. Other elements in its tail include traces of calcium and magnesium but [...]

Mercury is the innermost planet in the Solar System, but surprisingly it is not the hottest planet; that would be Venus. The reason for this is that Mercury has a thin atmosphere that cannot trap solar heat. Its maximum atmospheric pressure is estimated to be 0.00000000003 pounds per square inch; on Earth, the atmospheric pressure is around 14.7 pounds per square inch. Mercury’s atmosphere is composed of very small amounts of hydrogen, oxygen, helium and sodium.

The planet with the most eccentric orbit in the Solar System is Mercury. The eccentricity for the planet is 0.21 and its distance from the sun ranges from 46-70 million kilometers. It only takes 88 days for Mercury to orbit around the Sun; a typical year on Mercury would take 88 Earth days. Because of Mercury’s ever changing distance from the sun and its 3:2 spin-orbit resonance the temperature on Mercury’s surface is complex and varied.

Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun and is also the smallest in our Solar System. It is also considered to be a rocky or terrestrial planets and its interior composition is said to be similar to that of our own planet. The planet’s core is actually made up of liquid metal which is then surrounded by a mantle that is composed of silica and a solid outer crust. In Mercury’s case, the core only accounts for about 42% [...]