What makes mercury special

The only other planet in the Solar System without moons is Venus. Precise, fast changes in speed would be required. It is believed the Mariner 10 could be orbiting the Sun but it is out of fuel and has been powered down since Because of this, ancient civilizations already knew about its existence. Our current name for Mercury comes from Roman mythology after the god of commerce and communication. Greeks named the planet after Hermes because it was the planet that moved the fastest.

In modern Greece, they still refer to it with a variation of the name, they call it Ermis. What we do know is that in the modern era, the first person to see Mercury with a telescope was the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei.

The other is Venus. Its closeness to the Sun can be the other factor. Only a couple of uncrewed probes have been sent to study the planet.

Mercury is so close to the Sun that it has one of the harshest environments for us humans. A manned mission to Mercury is not likely to happen any time soon. Mercury is one of the four terrestrial planets in the Solar System. This means it has a rocky, solid composition. Liquid water is unlikely though. Not likely. Scientists do not believe there is life on Mercury or that there has ever been. Yes and no. While Mercury does have volcanoes, they are no longer active. This is because of the speed in which Mercury orbits the Sun and the speed with which Mercury the Roman deity was able to deliver messages.

However those same solar winds are also bringing in new gases, radioactive decay and dust from micrometeorites — replenishing the atmosphere. Mercury has no moons or rings because of its low gravity and lack of atmosphere. It was once believed that a planet called Vulcan existed between the orbit of Mercury and the Sun — however the existence of such a planet was never found. The orbit of Mercury is an ellipse rather than circular. It has the most eccentric orbit in the solar system and the least circular of all of the planets, according to scientists and astronomers.

Mercury is only the second hottest planet. Venus , though farther from the Sun than Mercury, actually experiences higher temperatures. Mercury does not experience any seasons. The axis of Mercury has the smallest tilt of all other planets, and this results in a lack of seasons on its surface. This is because it is nearly tidally locked to the Sun. Scientists believe the core of Mercury is probably molten.

The outer shell of Mercury is only to kilometers to miles thick. Mercury has a very thin atmosphere , which is made up of atoms from the surface of the planet that have been blown away by solar winds. As Mercury is so hot, these atoms quickly escape into space and so its atmosphere is constantly being replenished. Only two spacecraft have ever visited Mercury. The Mariner 10 visited during , flying by Mercury three times and mapping half its surface.

On March 24, it ran out of fuel and is still believed to be orbiting the Sun. Mercury has more craters and impact marks that any other planet.

Most of the Mercurian craters are named after famous writers and artists. If a crater is larger than km in diameter, it is known as a Basin. The largest Basin on Mercury, the Caloris Basin, is around 1, km in diameter and was discovered by the Mariner More information and facts about Mercury What remains intriguing about Mercury is how scant our knowledge has been regarding some of its key details until recently.

Atmosphere The Mercurial atmosphere is so thin that it is virtually non-existent. We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. However, you may visit "Cookie Settings" to provide a controlled consent. Read more on our privacy policy here. Cookie Settings Accept All. Manage consent.

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One study suggested that Mercury's surface features can generally be divided into two groups — one consisting of older material that melted at higher pressures at the core-mantle boundary, and the other of newer material that formed closer to Mercury's surface. Another study found that the dark hue of Mercury's surface is due to carbon. This carbon wasn't deposited by impacting comets, as some researchers suspected — instead, it may be a remnant of the planet's primordial crust.

A completely unexpected discovery made by Mariner 10 was that Mercury possessed a magnetic field. Planets theoretically generate magnetic fields only if they spin quickly and possess a molten core. But Mercury takes 59 days to rotate and is so small — just roughly one-third Earth's size — that its core should have cooled off long ago. An unusual interior could help to explain the differences in Mercury's magnetic field when compared to Earth.

Russell co-authored a model that suggests that Mercury's iron core may be turning from liquid to solid at the core's outer boundary rather than the inner. The discovery in by Earth-based radar observations that Mercury's core may still be molten could help explain its magnetism, though the solar wind may play a role in dampening the planet's magnetic field.

The magnetic field in the solar wind — the charged particles streaming off the sun — periodically touches upon Mercury's field, creating powerful magnetic tornadoes that channel the fast, hot plasma of the solar wind down to the planet's surface. Instead of a substantial atmosphere, Mercury possesses an ultra-thin "exosphere" made up of atoms blasted off its surface by solar radiation, the solar wind and micrometeoroid impacts.

These quickly escape into space, forming a tail of particles , according to NASA. The atmosphere of Mercury is a " surface-bound exosphere , essentially a vacuum. Its oval-shaped orbit is highly elliptical, taking Mercury as close as 29 million miles 47 million km and as far as 43 million miles 70 million km from the sun. If one could stand on Mercury when it is nearest to the sun, it would appear more than three times as large as it does when viewed from Earth.

Oddly, due to Mercury's highly elliptical orbit and the 59 Earth-days or so it takes to rotate on its axis, when on the scorching surface of the planet, the sun appears to rise briefly, set, and rise again before it travels westward across the sky. At sunset, the sun appears to set, rise again briefly, and then set again. In , a rare transit of Mercury happened , where the planet crossed the face of the sun as seen from Earth.

Mercury's transit may have yielded secrets about its thin atmosphere, assisted in the hunt for worlds around other stars, and helped NASA hone some of its instruments.