Mercury
Closest to the Sun
Mercury is the smallest of the eight planets and the closest to the Sun. Imagine a grey rocky ball covered in round hollows. These are craters, left by ancient crashes with space rocks. Mercury has almost no blanket of air to hold warmth. Its sunny side becomes very hot, while night brings amazing cold.
Mercury races around the Sun. A year there lasts just eighty-eight Earth days, less than three of our months! But it turns slowly on its own axis. This little world has no rings or moons. Spacecraft photograph its surface and help scientists discover how this rocky neighbour works.
Let’s build Mercury as a puzzle → Explore in the planetarium →In the planetarium you can spin this world and look at it from every side.
Sources and images
Celestial maps: Solar System Scope / INOVE · CC BY 4.0. Thumbnails were reduced and shaded. Artistic SVG maps were created for this project.