The American Space agency NASA keeps sharing some stunning images of celestial bodies on their social media pages for space enthusiasts across the globe.
In a recent post on Instagram, NASA shared a stunning image of Mercury- the smallest planet and closest planet to the Sun in the Solar system. This stunning view of Mercury was captured by MESSENGER, the first spacecraft to ever orbit the planet, which collected colour-enhanced maps to distinguish chemical, mineralogical, and physical differences in rocks on the planet's surface.
''They call me Mister Fahrenheit (Celsius)...While Mercury may be the smallest planet, it is also the speediest, traveling in its orbit at almost 29 miles (47 km) per second, making a year on Mercury just 88 Earth days,'' NASA wrote in the caption while sharing the image.
In the picture, Mercury appears tan and several shades of blue, and several craters are seen on its surface.
My Very Educated Mother Just Showed Us Nine Planets (MVEMJSUNP) is a mnemonic we all learned in school to remember the order and names of the nine planets of the solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto.
5 Facts Abouts Mercury
Mercury is an average of 36 million miles (58 million km) away. But despite its proximity to the Sun, do you know that Mercury is not the hottest planet in our solar system?
While Mercury may be the smallest planet, it is also the speediest, traveling in its orbit at almost 29 miles (47 km) per second, making a year on Mercury just 88 Earth days.
Instead of an atmosphere, Mercury has a thin exosphere composed mostly of oxygen, sodium, hydrogen, helium, and potassium.
Due to its lack of atmosphere and proximity to the Sun, the temperature during daytime and nighttime on Mercury swings dramatically, ranging from 800ºF (430ºC) during the day to -290 ºF (-180 ºC) at night.
Mercury’s comparatively weak magnetic field compared to Earth's, at just 1% of our own strength, interacts with solar winds, creating magnetic tornadoes that tear across the planet’s surface.
