Mercury has no rings, no moons, and a relatively weak magnetic field. Mercury’s surface gravity is more than twice that of the Moon, partly because of the great density of the planet’s huge iron-sulfur core. How big is Mercury? That puts it 500-800 km larger than Mars in radius, roughly 2,000 km smaller than Venus in radius. NY 10036. Also like Earth, Mercury’s interior is believed to be composed of a molten iron that is surrounded by a mantle of silicate material. Mercury has a radius of 2,439 km or 1,515 miles, only about 38% the size of Earth. The difficulty in seeing it notwithstanding, Mercury was known at least by Sumerian times, some 5,000 years ago. (Amazing Facts You Need To Know), Best Binoculars For Astronomy – Ultimate Expert Picks, How Can I See Saturn? What is Mercury like? It is a sibling of the Mazda Tribute and Ford Escape, although it is more upmarket than the other two.The Mariner is Mercury's first car-based SUV, and is slotted below the Mountaineer in the lineup. This video is unavailable. Watch Queue Queue Mercury has a rocky surface and an iron core. Mercury - Mercury - Impact craters: The most common topographic features on Mercury are the craters that cover much of its surface. StarGazingPro.com is compensated for referring traffic and business to these companies. Mercury's diameter is 4,880 km, while Venus is much bigger, having a diameter of 12,104 km. Several of the planet's scarps reach as high as 1.86 miles (3 km). While it's an extremely rare element, there's a world of interesting information about mercury. Future US, Inc. 11 West 42nd Street, 15th Floor, This view of Mercury is made up of hundreds of images taken by NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft during its first flyby of the planet in 2008. If you owned a paint sprayer that had the ability to paint an area the size of the state of Texas every 24 hours, that same paint sprayer could paint the planet Mercury in 107 days. Now that Pluto is no longer classified as a planet, Mercury is the smallest planet in the solar system. Ironically, the planet closest to the sun contains ice on its surface. Nov. 30, 1954: Meteorite falls on woman in Alabama. from Space.com ift.tt/1rKbXXT That of Sun at equator is 1392530 kilometers. How big is Mercury? Carnegie Inst. It has a mass of 3.3022 × 1023 kg which is only 5.5% that of Earth (about 1/18th). Mercury is a shiny, silvery, liquid metal, sometimes called quicksilver.It is a transition metal with atomic number 80 on the periodic table and an atomic weight of 200.59, and its element symbol is Hg. Like lead or cadmium, mercury is a constituent element of the earth, a heavy metal.In pure form, it is known alternatively as "elemental" or "metallic" mercury (also expressed as Hg(0) or Hg 0).Mercury is rarely found in nature as the pure, liquid metal, but rather within compounds and inorganic salts. of Washington, JHU-APL, NASA Share this: (It's not the hottest planet; that honor is reserved for Venus.) ~ Fun Fact ~ Although being the closest planet to the Sun, Mercury is not the hottest planet in our solar system. The mission, which ended in 2015, continues to yield new finds, including that Mercury has a giant solid inner core. If Earth were the size of a baseball, Mercury would be about the size of a golf ball. The discovery helped balance models of the planet's interior evolution with observations at its surface. A 2014 study of nearly 6,000 scarps taken by NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft suggest that Mercury contracted radially as much as 4.4 miles (7 kilometers) since its birth 4.5 billion years ago. It has a diameter of 3,032 miles (4,879 kilometers), about two-fifths of Earth's diameter. StarGazingPro.com also participates in affiliate programs with Bluehost, Clickbank, CJ, ShareASale, and other sites. This high density in a planet that otherwise resembles the moon raises interesting questions about the composition of the planet's interior. It is the closest planet to the Sun, and second smallest planet in the solar system.Its diameter is 40% smaller than Earth and 40% larger than the Moon.It is even smaller than Jupiter's moon Ganymede and Saturn's moon Titan. Learn something new every day. The surface gravity on Mercury is only about 38% of the surface gravity on Earth, so if you weigh 100 pounds on Earth, you would weigh only 38 pounds on Mercury. This means that Mercury is very dense. Although its surface resembles our moon, the tiny planet has a density that rivals Earth itself. With a radius of 1,516 miles (2,440 kilometers), Mercury is a little more than 1/3 the width of Earth. Size and Distance. For planet Mercury, you could put 2.8 of the Earth’s Moon inside. This makes Mercury's mass very high compared to its size. How big of an issue is mercury with chunk light tuna? He sent a Christmas present to Elton John from beyond the grave. This mass is contained in a volume of 14.6 billion cubic miles (60.8 billion cubic km). Mercury’s surface gravity is more than twice that of the Moon, partly because of the great density of the planet’s huge iron-sulfur core. 92,956,050 miles. Mercury was named by the Romans after the fleet-footed messenger of the gods because it seemed to move more quickly than any other planet. Mercury is the smallest of the eight planets and is closest to the sun. "We've been thinking of Mercury as a relic – a place that's really not changing much anymore, except by impact cratering. Mercury in the fish we like to eat is a big problem in the United States and increasingly around the world. If we use the 49.5%-53.4% as a guideline, Mercury's 2,440 km radius (85% core, so it's core is about 2,074 KM), so a rough estimate using the other 3 planets as a guideline, 3,880 - 4,190 km radius. Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun and is also the smallest of the eight planets in our solar system.For every 2 orbits of the Sun, which takes around 88 Earth days, Mercury completes three rotations of its axis. NerdWallet’s ratings are determined by our editorial team. Mercury is the smallest planet in the Solar System by surface area, volume, and equatorial diameter. System, measuring just 3,032 miles ( 60.8 billion cubic miles appearance, Mercurian craters are named after writers. 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