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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.
This was the first evidence that anything other than the planets repeatedly orbited the Sun, [289] though Seneca had theorized this about comets in the 1st century. [290] Careful observations of the 1769 transit of Venus allowed astronomers to calculate the average Earth–Sun distance as 93,726,900 miles (150,838,800 km), only 0.8% greater ...
1st Planet: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn were identified by ancient Babylonian astronomers in the 2nd millennium BC. [7] They were correctly identified as orbiting the Sun by Aristarchus of Samos, and later in Nicolaus Copernicus' heliocentric system [8] (De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, 1543) Venus: 2nd Planet: Mars: 4th Planet ...
One particularly distant body is 90377 Sedna, which was discovered in November 2003.It has an extremely eccentric orbit that takes it to an aphelion of 937 AU. [2] It takes over 10,000 years to orbit, and during the next 50 years it will slowly move closer to the Sun as it comes to perihelion at a distance of 76 AU from the Sun. [3] Sedna is the largest known sednoid, a class of objects that ...
The transit of Mercury on May 9, 2016. Mercury is visible to the lower left of center. A sun spot is visible above center. Mercury transiting the Sun as viewed by the rover Curiosity on Mars (June 3, 2014). [1] A transit of Mercury across the Sun takes place when the planet Mercury passes directly between the Sun and a superior planet.
All planets orbit the Sun in elliptical orbits (image on the right) and not perfectly circular orbits. [72] The radius vector joining the planet and the Sun has an equal area in equal periods. [73] The square of the period of the planet (one revolution around the Sun) is proportional to the cube of the average distance from the Sun. [74]
How will November 2024’s Mercury retrograde impact my life? Mercury retrograde rocks the boat in optimistic Sagittarius on November 25. The final Mercury retrograde will leave everyone with ...
In the Solar System, a planet is said to be inferior or interior with respect to another planet if its orbit lies inside the other planet's orbit around the Sun. In this situation, the latter planet is said to be superior to the former. In the reference frame of the Earth, where the terms were originally used, the inferior planets are Mercury ...