Interesting Facts: Mercury

Dun dun dun-dun (Space Odyssey Theme song), hello fellow space lovers today we will be exploring the planet closest to the sun, Mercury. We hope you find these facts interesting and feel free to share anymore facts that you may know.

• Mercury is the smallest planet (Sorry Pluto but you are no longer considered a planet).
• A year on Mercury is 88 Earth days.
• Mercury has no moons (that’s rough buddy).
• The earliest observation of Mercury was in 265 BC.
• Mercury is 4.5 billion years old.
• Even though Mercury is the planet closet to the sun it is not the hottest planet that title goes to none other than Venus.
• Mercury’s sky is black do to there being a thin atmosphere.
• There have been 2 spacecrafts that orbited around mercury (Messenger and Mariner 10).
• Mercury is named after the Roman messenger god, Mercury.
• Mercury’s core is made of Iron and the core takes up 3/4 of the planet’s diameter.
• It is estimated a human will only be able to live on Mercury for 8 Earth days.
• One day on Mercury is 58d 15h 30m long.
• Scientist believe that Mercury was hit by a big asteroid about 4 billion years ago.
• Early civilization thought that Mercury was a second sun.
• The planet has just 38% of Earth’s gravity.

Thank you so much for reading! Let us know if there is a specific topic you would like to see facts on!

~Stay Curious~