Mercury, and the other inner planets, condense from the heavier elementes. Condensing closest of all to the sun, Mercury is rock solid. Outwardly, Mercury is like our Moon: rocky, cratered, barren. But inside, like Earth, is an iron-rich core. That core is as big as the Moon and, at 70% iron, Mercury is the densest planet of all.
Also Mercury’s day is twice as long as its year. The day lasts 176 Earth days, the year just 88. But it gets stranger... If you stood on Mercury you’d see the Sun apparently shrinking in the sky. It’s to do with the variable distance of the Sun. For the planet has an elliptical orbit. The Sun appears larger when Mercury swings close. Far away, and it’s half the size.
Venus’s atmosphere is 90 times denser than Earth’s. Several craft are crushed. It seems Venus is massively volcanic. If we ever reached the surface, we’d be instantley crushed. And to add to the horror, the supper clouds are bathed in sulphuric acid.
By contrast, our highlands on Earth form sever continents. Venus has two. …show more content…
We know a lot about Mars but what do we know about the moons of Mars?
Mars setting behind one of its two tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos. They’re probably ancient asteroids petrified rocks captured by an ice-cool planet.
The larger moon is Phobos, whose name comes from the Greek word which means “fear”. Phobos measures just 22.7 km across and has an orbit that places it closer to Mars than Deimos. Phobos orbits at an average distance of only 9,377 km above Mars.
Mars’ second moon is Deimos, which takes its name from the Greek word for panic. It is even smaller, measuring just 12.6 km across, and is also less irregular in shape. Its orbit places it much farther away from Mars, at a distance of 23,460 km, which means that Deimos takes 30.35 hours to complete an orbit around Mars.
Phobos and Deimos were originally discovered by American astronomer Asaph