Mercury

Mercury is the smallest planet and is closest to the sun. it was named after the roman god. Mercury's is 4,878km at the equator. Which is about two fifths of earth. Mercury orbits the sun every 88 days. Mercury is about 58 million km from earth. Mercury rotates once every 59 earth days because it rotates so slow one earth day lasts 176 earth days. The craters on Mercury have been scaned by an earth based radar which has found water in the craters.

[|www.aerospaceguide.net/planet/planetmercury.html]

Mercury has lots of different craters that range from sizes of 2,300 km to 400 km it expands to 500 km. The craters names are Skinakas basin with a diameter of 2,300 km, Caloris basin with a diameter of 1,550 km, tolstoj basin 500 km and beethoven basin 652 km

Mercury has extreame tempretures the tempreture mercury may reach to 450 degrees c during the night the tempreture may drop as low as -170 degrees c. The sunlight on mercury's surface is 6.5 times as tense as is on earth due to how close the sun is to the planet.

Mercury's atmosphere is dry,extreamly hot and almost airles. Mercury's weak atmosphere contains hydrogen,oxygen,sodium,helium and culcium.

HISTORY Mercury has been known since acient times, Until about the mid-1965 astronomers believed that Mercury rotated one every 88 days the same time the planet would take to go around the sun. If Mercury did this one side of the planet would be facing the sun all the time and the other side would always be in the dark. how ever studies conducted in the 1965 showed that the planet rotates once every 59 days. Mercury is the fastest moving planet in our solar system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/mercury_(planet)