Everybody’s favourite planet (apart from probably Earth) – Mercury!

Today I’m talking about Mercury. (Can you see a running theme? – crazy!)
The closest planet to the sun, Mercury basically resembles our own moon in that it is mainly cratered with regions of smooth plains has no natural satellites and no atmosphere. Being so close to The Sun Mercury only takes 87.969 earth days to orbit it fully unlike Earths 365.3, it is also the smallest planet in the solar system and has the smallest axial tilt.

We don’t really know that much about Mercury as you can only see an illuminated crescent when looking through a telescope, however we do know that it has a core of iron which generates a magnetic field about 1% as strong as the earths. This large iron core makes the planet incredibly dense. The surface temperature of Mercury varies from -183 °C, at the bottom of its deepest craters near the poles and 427°C at its subsolar point, its mean temperature being 169.35 °C. So all in all a pretty inhospitable planet! Still at least its named after the roman god of trade… And he had wings on his hat!