Mercury
The swift, scorched messenger
The smallest planet and closest to the Sun, Mercury swings through extreme temperatures with almost no atmosphere to buffer them. A year here is shorter than two of its own days.
Image: NASA / MESSENGER
Vital statistics
Moons
0
Gravity vs Earth
0.38 g
Day length
176 Earth days
Year length
88 Earth days
Diameter
4,879 km
Distance from Sun
57.9 million km
Did you know
Surface swings from -180 °C at night to 430 °C in the day.
Fact 01
Mercury has wrinkles called 'lobate scarps' from cooling and shrinking.
Fact 02
It has a tenuous exosphere of oxygen, sodium and hydrogen.
Fact 03
Research & publications
Jump straight into peer-reviewed papers, preprints and authoritative references for Mercury.
arXiv (preprints)
Open-access preprints in physics & astrophysics.
NASA ADS
The definitive bibliographic database for astronomy.
Google Scholar
Cross-publisher academic search.
Nature
Peer-reviewed articles in Nature & sister journals.
Wikipedia
Encyclopedic overview & onward references.
Tip: ask the Research AI for a curated reading list → /research
