Mercury Facts - Kids
Mercury is the closest planet to the sun and hot, hot, hot. To get a feel for it, we need to look at facts on the Planet Mercury for kids.
Mercury Facts - Kids
Mercury is unlike any other planet in the solar system. Its unique location, rotation and orbit around the sun make it behave differently than other planets. Let’s take a look:
- Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun.
- Mercury rotates the Sun in only 88 days.
- Mercury rotates very slowly on its axis with one day taking 58 Earth days.
- Mercury barely has any atmosphere, but does have glaciers.
- Mercury is named after the Roman messenger of the gods.
- On average, Mercury is 36 million miles from the Sun.
- During the day, the average temperature on Mercury is 800 degrees Fahrenheit.
- During the night, the average temperature is – 300 degrees.
- Mercury is 38 percent of the diameter of the Earth.
- Mercury has no moons.
- Small in diameter, Mercury is the second largest planet when measured by mass.
- Mercury is primarily comprised of iron, which accounts for its heavy mass.
- Mercury has the largest known impact crater of any planet, named Beethoven and 643 kilometers in size.
- Mercury has an eccentric orbit around the Sun, meaning it is closer and farther from the Sun at different points in time.
- At its closest orbit, Mercury is “only” 46 million kilometers from the sun.
- At its farthest orbit, Mercury is 70 million miles from the Sun.
- In 2011, the spacecraft Messenger will arrive at Mercury to study it.
- Messenger was launched in 2004.
- Mercury can be seen with binoculars at sunset.
- Like Earth, Mercury has a magnetic field.
- The magnetic field of Mercury is only one percent as strong as ours.
Despite its relative closeness to Earth, a spacecraft has only visited Mercury once. The craft, Mariner 10, flew by three times in 1974 and 75. It only observed 45 percent of the surface and the results were not great because of the relatively poor technology. This was pre-Internet and a time when basic computers were the size of small refrigerators. Great hope is held out that Messenger will reveal the secrets of Mercury when it arrives in 2011.
