Mercury is smaller than Earth's moon and has craters.
Humans have known about the planet since it is visible to the untrained eye. The planet Nabu was mentioned by both the Babylonians and the Sumerians in the 2nd millennium BC. The Romans named it after the god Mercury. Astronomers Galileo Galilei and Thomas Harriot used a new telescope in 1631 to observe the planet.
Scientists have been interested in the little planet since its first visit from NASA. It will no doubt continue to surprise us after the BepiColombo mission arrives at the small planet in the late 20th century.
There are a lot of strange facts about Mercury.
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Mercury's lack of a heat-trapping atmosphere makes its surface extremely cold. During the day the temperature can be as high as 800 degrees Fahrenheit, but at night it can be as low as minus 180 degrees. The largest planet in the solar system has a temperature swing of around 1,100 F.
The smallest planet in the sun is Mercury. The planet is roughly the same size as the continental United States and only slightly larger than the moon.
Both of Jupiter's moons are bigger than Mercury. The award of the smallest planet has been given to Mercury after it was reclassified as a dwarf planet.
According to NASA, Mercury is the fastest planet in the solar system, with an average speed of 29 miles per second. Mercury has a very fast and elliptical path. As far as 70 million km from the sun and as close as 29 million miles.
Water ice was found in some of Mercury's craters. Mercury has more ice in its north polar region than was thought. The existence of ice was first suggested by telescopes in the 1990's.
Being so close to the sun makes it odd that Mercury has any surface ice at all. The polar regions of the planet get very little sunlight, and some craters remain dark, because of the lack of an atmosphere.
About 75% of the planet's diameter is made up of Mercury's huge metallic core. The outer shell of Mercury is only 300 miles to 400 miles thick.
The core has more iron than any other planet. It's not clear how it formed or why it's so large.
The MESSENGER probe flew over Mercury for more than four years and beamed back amazing images of the planet. The first complete map of Mercury was created using those images.
Mercury has a very thin atmosphere. Scientists call the atmosphere an exosphere because of it's thinness. According to NASA, Mercury's exosphere contains mostly oxygen, sodium, hydrogen, helium and potassium.
Mercury has streams of particles that are similar to comets. According to an article from EarthSky, long-exposure photographs taken byastrophotographers on Earth can capture these strange tails.
The tails are created when Mercury's exosphere glows with light from the sun, according to scientists. According to an article from NASA Science, sunlight can free these molecule from Mercury's surface and push them into space.
Mercury seems to be too small to host a global magnetic field, but it does. The magnetic field on Mercury is only 1% of Earth's, but it can cause a lot of commotion on the surface.
According to NASA, when Mercury's magnetic field interacts with the solar wind, it sometimes creates magnetic tornadoes. The loops high into Mercury's atmosphere are caused by neutrally charged atoms being displaced by the solar wind.
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