Mercury is the planet closest to the sun.
It is one of the four inner planets. The
inner planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth and
Mars. The inner planets are also called the
rocky planets, because they are made of rocks.
Mercury orbits the sun very quickly. It only takes it 88 days to go around the sun. It takes Earth 365 days to orbit around the sun. One orbit around the sun is a year. A year on Earth is 365 days. A year on Mercury is only 88 days!
Mercury spins very slowly on its axis. It takes Mercury 176 "Earth days" to spin around on its axis one time. It takes Earth only 24 hours to spin all the way around. Our day is 24 hours long, because that is how long it takes Earth to spin around once. A day on Mercury is 176 Earth days long. Could you stay up that long????
See the Earth spin? One spin is a 24 hour
day. The Earth will spin around 176 times
before Mercury would spin around once! An
Earth day is shorter than a day on Mercury.
Pluto is the only planet that is smaller than Mercury. Mercury is about 1/3 the size of Earth. 3 Mercurys = 1 Earth! Mercury has many craters all over it. This picture shows some of the craters. Craters are big holes that are made when meteorites hit a planet.
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