How old are you now if we are living on Mercury? Let’s learn five magnificent planet Mercury facts for kids.
Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun as it is roughly 47 million km from the Sun. Although this may seem quite far, the Earth is roughly 149 million km away from the sun, around three times the distance from Mercury to the Sun. This makes Mercury the first planet in the Solar System. Mercury’s atmosphere is weak and because of its proximity to the sun, the planet can experience scorching temperatures during the day and freezing temperatures at night.
With a radius of about 2,439.7 km, Mercury is the smallest planet in the Solar System. This means that Mercury’s diameter is roughly 4,880 km, which would make it about three-fourths as long as The Amazon River. 18 Mercurys could fit inside the Earth and Mercury is only a little bigger than the Earth’s moon. Not only is Mercury the smallest planet in our Solar System but it is also shrinking very slowly every day. It is said that this is as a result of the planet cooling causing the iron core to solidify.
The planet’s closeness to the Sun makes Mercury’s orbit shorter than those of any other planet in the Solar System. One year in Mercury is only about 88 Earth days. That is less than three months. However, although a year is quite short on the small planet, the days are very very long on Mercury. Mercury rotates very slowly around its axis. One Mercurial day takes almost 59 Earth days. So if you ever think the day is going long, just imagine how long it would feel if you were on Mercury.
Mercury was named after the Roman messenger god, Mercury. This was because Mercury was the fastest planet to move around the Sun and its speed was likened to that of the Roman messenger god’s speed. Mercury travels around space at roughly 47 km per second.
Mercury is visible from Earth and can be seen by the naked eye when there are clear conditions. However, Mercury is not visible when it is too close to the Sun. It can be seen in the western sky an hour after sunset and can be seen in the eastern sky an hour before sunrise. Mercury’s thin atmosphere, extreme temperatures and huge craters mean life would not survive on the planet and that is why we can only observe Mercury from afar. Although no human is likely to visit Mercury, we do have a bit of Mercury on Earth. A green meteorite found on Earth in 2012 matched Nasa’s MESSENGER probe’s data collected from Mercury.
We hope you enjoyed learning more things about Mercury as much as we loved teaching you about them. Now that you know how majestic these planets are, you can move on to learn about other ones like: Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune.
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