by Colm Byrne on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2013

Mercury is the planet closest to the Sun and on Mercury the length of a day lasts 58 days, 15 hours on Earth. It takes 88 days for the planets to orbit the Sun so a year is quit short compared to 365 days on Earth.

Another really strange thing, Mercury’s orbit has the highest eccentricity of all the Solar System planets. It gets to a point in its orbit when the speed of its orbital velocity is the same as its angular rotational velocity. Which, make the Sun appear to go backwards. But, this then corrects itself and resumes its normal direction.

Planet Mercury can be seen without a telescope and has no moon.

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