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Mercury is the first planet from the Sun and the smallest in the Solar System. In English, it is named after the ancient Roman god Mercurius , god of commerce and communication, and the messenger of the gods. Mercury is classified as a terrestrial planet, with roughly the same surface gravity as Mars.
Proposals that there could be planets orbiting inside Mercury's orbit were put forward by British scientist Thomas Dick in 1838 [8]: 264 and by French physicist, mathematician, and astronomer Jacques Babinet in 1846 who suggested there may be "incandescent clouds of a planetary kind, circling the Sun" and proposed the name "Vulcan" (after the ...
Caravaggio is an example of a Peak ring impact basin on Mercury. Several areas on Mercury are extremely dark, such as a small crater within Hemingway crater in the lower right. The geology of Mercury is the scientific study of the surface, crust, and interior of the planet Mercury. It emphasizes the composition, structure, history, and physical ...
The vulcanoids are a hypothetical population of asteroids that orbit the Sun in a dynamically stable zone inside the orbit of the planet Mercury. They are named after the hypothetical planet Vulcan, which was proposed on the basis of irregularities in Mercury's orbit that were later found to be explained by general relativity. So far, no ...
Interior planet now seems to be the preferred term for astronomers. Inferior/interior and superior are different from the terms inner planet and outer planet, which designate those planets that lie inside the asteroid belt and those that lie outside it, respectively. Inferior planet is also different from minor planet or dwarf planet.
A spacecraft has beamed back some of the best close-up photos ever of Mercury’s north pole. The European and Japanese robotic explorer swooped as close as 183 miles (295 kilometers) above ...
Vulcan, a hypothetical planet once believed to exist inside the orbit of Mercury. Initially proposed as the cause for the perturbations in the orbit of Mercury, some astronomers spent many years searching for it, with many instances of people claiming to have found it.
Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Mercury and Saturn are potentially visible to the naked eye, but Mercury will be the hardest of those to spot. For Uranus and Neptune, you’ll need binoculars or a telescope.