Mercury

Mercury is the planet which is closest to the sun. It is one of the four inner planets. These 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 long!

1 Earth year = about 4 Mercury years!!

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????

Pluto is the only planet that is smaller than Mercury. Mercury is about 1/3 as big as earth.


3 Mercurys = 1 Earth!


See the earth spin? One spin is a 24 hour day. You would have to see the earth spin around 176 times before Mercury would spin around once!

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.