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The study of extraterrestrial atmospheres is an active field of research, [1] both as an aspect of astronomy and to gain insight into Earth's atmosphere. [2] In addition to Earth, many of the other astronomical objects in the Solar System have atmospheres. These include all the giant planets, as well as Mars, Venus and Titan.
The precession of Mercury was already known; experiments showing light bending in accordance with the predictions of general relativity were performed in 1919, with increasingly precise measurements made in subsequent tests; and scientists claimed to have measured the gravitational redshift in 1925, although measurements sensitive enough to ...
The Hubble Space Telescope cannot observe Mercury at all, due to safety procedures that prevent its pointing too close to the Sun. [143] Because the shift of 0.15 revolutions of Earth in a Mercurian year makes up a seven-Mercurian-year cycle (0.15 × 7 ≈ 1.0), in the seventh Mercurian year, Mercury follows almost exactly (earlier by 7 days ...
Instead, flyby and orbital missions to Mercury can study the planet and receive accurate data. Even though Mercury is closer to Earth than Pluto is, the transfer orbit from Earth to Mercury requires more energy. Mercury being so close to the Sun, space probes going there are accelerating as they approach, due to the Sun's gravitational pull.
There are large variations in surface temperature over space and time on airless or near-airless bodies like Mars, which has daily surface temperature variations of 50–60 K. [18] [19] Because of a relative lack of air to transport or retain heat, significant variations in temperature develop. Assuming the planet radiates as a blackbody (i.e ...
Heller et al. (2021) estimated that shortly after the Moon was formed, when the Moon orbited 10-15 times closer to Earth than it does now, tidal heating might have contributed ~10 W/m 2 of heating over perhaps 100 million years, and that this could have accounted for a temperature increase of up to 5°C on the early Earth.
This could eject it from the Solar System altogether [1] or send it on a collision course with Venus, the Sun, or Earth. [11] Mercury's perihelion-precession rate is dominated by planet–planet interactions, but about 7.5% of Mercury's perihelion precession rate comes from the effects described by general relativity. [12]
In the Schwarzschild solution, it is assumed that the larger mass M is stationary and it alone determines the gravitational field (i.e., the geometry of space-time) and, hence, the lesser mass m follows a geodesic path through that fixed space-time. This is a reasonable approximation for photons and the orbit of Mercury, which is roughly 6 ...