Mercury

This is the first post in my series of adventures detailing our solar system. This post is about Mercury, the closets planet in our solar system to the sun, the planet with the smallest axis orientation and the most elliptical orbit from all the planets.

Mercury is the closest planet to the sun, but it is not the hottest. The hottest planet in our solar system is Venus, but that is for another blog post. Mercury is a rocky planet much like Earth, Mars and Venus. It is the densest planet of all the planets with about 75% of the planets mass being iron compared to earths 50%. In addition to being the densest planet it also has a very thin atmosphere, this explains why the planet is not the hottest planet. In order for a planet to retain the heat from the suns rays it must have an atmosphere to trap the visible light and Ultra violet radiation within its atmosphere, this is called the green house effect, it is what warms the Earth. This leads to the range in the planets temperature to peaks of 430 degrees celsius to lows of -180 degrees celsius.

Mercury is a rocky planet which formed like the other rocky planets of Venus, Earth and Mars. In the simplest terms the planets build up in size over time accumulating dust to build up and create the rocky planet, the size of the planet is dependent on how powerful the gravity of the planets core is. The bigger the core, the more gravity there is leading to a bigger planet and vice versa.

Mercurys axis of oration is virtually straight (2 degrees lean) leading to the planet having ice caps. The reason these ice caps form is due to the axis of rotation being so straight. While most of the planet is exposed to the intense solar radiation emitted by the sun leading to the temperature peaks of 430 degrees celsius. However as some areas of Mercury have never received solar radiation they form ice caps, millions in years of age, resulting in the ice caps forming as they are constantly exposed to the cold empty vacuum of space.

Mercury has the most elliptical orbit around the sun from all the planets in our solar system. The reason for this exaggerated ellipsis is due to planets close proximity to the sun. Mercury just gets so close to the suns disturbed region of spacetime (due to the suns mass) shifting Mercury's perihelion (closest point to the sun) each time it passes the sun. Mercury orbits the sun roughly every 88 Earth days travelling at an average speed of 105,947 miles per hour, the fastest in our solar system.