Planet Mercury

Mercury - the closest planet to the Sun, is located at a distance of 57,900,000 miles. Watch it can rarely, only in the morning and evening. Orbit around the Sun in just eighty-eight Earth days. Therefore, the rate of Mercury in its motion in orbit more than Earth. Year of Mercury in more than four times shorter than the Earth.

For rapidity, for the agility with which the planet is running across the sky, she was nicknamed the heavenly messenger. Mercury - the planet is small. The diameter of its 4,840 kilometers. By volume of Mercury is twenty times smaller than Earth. By the size of Mercury is a bit more of the moon. Until recently it was thought that Mercury always faces the sun on one side, as the Moon to the Earth. But in Actually this is not quite true. Recent observations showed that Mercury slowly rotates on its axis, making one revolution in fifty-nine Earth days.

Day and night on this planet lasts for a Earth's moon. Fever, which prevails on the day side of Mercury (the side facing the sun) reaches four degrees, and the unlit side of the permanent cold - about -50 . At this temperature, melt lead and tin. If Mercury were lead and tin mountain, over the long day they managed to turn into a sea of molten metal. And on the dark side of Mercury reigns intense cold. It is clear that under these conditions no life on the planet can not be. Mercury has no satellites. Watching him hard. The planet is too close to the Sun, and eclipse the sun's rays.