a brief description of planet mercury

2. Nearest planet to sun
Overview:
Radius - 0.38 RE
Distance from sun – 0.39 AU
orbital eccentricity e=0.205
It revolves around sun in 88 days
It rotates in its own axis in 59 days

3. Facts:-
• Mercury formed about 4.5 billion years ago when
gravity pulled swirling gas and dust together to form
this small planet.
• It doesn’t have any moon.
• Smallest planet of solar system.
• Highest orbital speed 47 kilometres per second.
• Highest orbital eccentricity among all planets (more
elliptical).

6. • Temperature :
• Temperatures on the surface of Mercury are
extreme, both hot and cold. During the day,
temperatures on Mercury's surface can
reach 430 degrees Celsius. Because the
planet has no atmosphere to retain that
heat, night time temperatures on the
surface can drop to minus 180 degrees
Celsius.
• Due to absence of atmosphere and green
house gases heat gained through sunlight
are lost .
• Atmosphere :
• Instead of an atmosphere, Mercury
possesses a thin exosphere made up of
atoms blasted off the surface by the solar
wind and striking meteoroids. Mercury's
exosphere is composed mostly of oxygen,
sodium, hydrogen, helium and potassium.
• Mercury may have water ice at its north
and south poles inside deep craters, but
only in regions of permanent shadow.
There it could be cold enough to
preserve water ice despite the high
temperatures on sunlit parts of the
planet.

7. Mercury is small, and composed largely of iron.
Mercury have density = 5.42
Mercury crust doesn’t
have tectonic plates
Mercury Earth
1800 km
2400 km

8. Surface:
• Much like moon its surface is
filled with impact craters
resulting from collisions with
meteoroids and comets.
• While there are large areas of
smooth terrain, there are also
cliffs, some hundreds of miles
long and soaring up to a mile
high. They rose as the planet's
interior cooled and contracted
over the billions of years since
Mercury formed.

9. Caloris impact crater:-

10. Caloris
Antipode

11. Mariner 10,
It flew over Mercury
at an altitude of 756
km on in March
1974. It took many
photographs of the
surface of Mercury.
Its photographs
cover nearly half
(the other half is
unexplored) the
surface area of the
planet Mercury.
EXPLORATION:
MESSENGER,
launched Aug. 3,
2004,
MESSENGER entered
orbit around
Mercury on March
18, 2011, becoming
the first spacecraft
to do so. It
successfully
completed its
primary mission in
2012. Following two
mission extensions,It
impacting the
surface of Mercury
on April 30, 2015..