SOLAR SYSTEMThe Mercury

Presented by:

Hannah N. Andan

SOLAR

SYSTEM

Consists:

Consists:

Solar System

•It formed from the collapse of a giant molecular cloud approximately 4.6 billion years ago

Time to Rotate:

•58.6 days

 Mass:

•3.30e23 kg (5.5% of Earth's)

 Diameter:

•4,878km (3,032 miles) at its equator, which is about two-fifths of Earth's diameter.

MERCURY

•The planet mercury is the closest The planet mercury is the closest planet to our sunplanet to our sun•And is the planet in the solar system.And is the planet in the solar system.•Named after the Roman God.Named after the Roman God.

Facts about Planet Mercury

Orbit:

•57,910,000 km (0.38 AU) from Sun. Orbiting the Sun once every 88 days.

Average Distance

•About 58 million km (36 million miles)

Period of Rotation:

•58.6462 days.

Mariner 1•The Mariner program was a program conducted by the American space agency NASA that launched a series of robotic interplanetary probes designed to investigate Mars, Venus and Mercury.

Composition

•Mercury is the second densest major body in the solar system after Planet Earth.

•Mercury's smaller mass makes its force of gravity only about a third as strong as that of the Earth. An object that weighs 100 pounds on the Earth would weigh only about 38 pounds on Mercury.

Surface:

•The surface of Mercury consists of CRATERED TERRAIN and smooth PLAINS and many deep craters similar to those on the moon.

•The craters formed when meteors or small comets crashed into the planet. The largest known crater is CALORIS BASIN, with a diameter of 1300 km (800 miles).

Water:

•Scans of Mercury made by Earth-based radar indicate that craters at Mercury's poles contain water ice.

Temperature:

•The temperature on the planet may reach 450 degrees C (840 degrees F) during the day. But at night, the temperature may drop as low as -170 degrees C (-275 degrees F). The sunlight on Mercury’s surface is 6.5 times as intense as it is on Earth due its closeness to the sun.

Atmosphere:

•Mercury is dry, extremely hot and almost airless.

• Planet Mercury is too small for its gravity to retain any significant atmosphere over long periods of time.

• The weak atmosphere contains hydrogen, helium, oxygen, sodium, calcium and potassium.

Name:

•The Greeks gave it two names: Apollo for when it appeared as a morning star and Hermes when it came as an evening star.

•In Roman mythology Mercury is the God of commerce, travel and thievery, the Roman counterpart of the Greek god Hermes, the messenger of the Gods.

Viewing:

•Because of Mercury's size and nearness to the sun, the planet is often hard to see from the Earth without a telescope.

•At certain times of the year, Mercury can be seen low in the western sky just after sunset. At other times, it can be seen low in the eastern sky just before sunrise.

Phases:

•When viewed through a telescope, Mercury can be seen going through ‘changes’ in shape and size.

•These apparent changes are called phases and resemble those of the moon.

• They result from different parts of Mercury's sunlit side being visible from the Earth at different times. 

History

•Mercury has been known since ancient times. Until the mid-1960's, astronomers believed that Mercury rotated once every 88 Earth days, the same time the planet takes to go around the sun.

•If Mercury did this, one side of the planet would always face the sun and the other side would always be dark.

•However, radar studies conducted in 1965 showed that the planet rotates once in about 59 days.

References:

http://www.aerospaceguide.net/planet/planetmercury.html