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Why Is Mercury Closest To The Sun

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Why Is Mercury Closest To The Sun
Mercury, the planet closest to the sun, may be shrinking due to the discoveries of MESSENGER. Large scraps were formed when Mercury’s interior cooled, causing the planet to contract. Subsequently, Mercury is the smallest of all the eight planets in our solar system. Additionally, Mercury is a little bigger than Earth’s moon, but not by much. Despite Mercury’s small size, the planet itself is very heavy. Comparatively, Mercury is a lot heavier compared to Earth’s moon.

Mercury is named after a Roman messenger god, therefore, is the Roman counterpart to the ancient Greek god Hermes, the messenger of the gods. Furthermore, Mercury is the nearest to the sun, so it takes only 88 Earth days to fully revolve around the sun. Despite the fast Mercury
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This is because Mercury doesn’t have a blanket of air around it. The blanket is what keeps a planet from becoming too hot or cold, and the effect of this is the temperatures. During the day, Mercury can get up to 430(C), and at night, it can get as cold as -180(C). Considering that the temperatures are so hot, it is concluded that these temperatures make it so humans can’t live on Mercury.

Nevertheless Mercury is so close to the sun, it can only be observed during dawn or dusk. Moreover, Mercury has a thin exosphere, which is made up of atoms blasted off the surface by the solar wind. Mercury’s magnetic field has just one percent the strength of Earth’s. Although, it can interact with the solar wind. For instance, this creates tornadoes that bring the fast, hot solar wind plasma back down to the surface.

“Mercury’s eccentric orbit takes the small planet as close as 47 million km and as far as 70 million km from the sun.” According to NASA, Mercury orbits really close to the sun, because it is the planet in our solar system that is the closest to the sun. Therefore, if anyone were able to stand on the scorching surface of mercury, the sun would look three times bigger than it would look on

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