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Mercury to scale among the Inner Solar System planetary-mass objects beside the Sun, arranged by the order of their orbits outward from the Sun (from left: Mercury, Venus, Earth, the Moon, Mars and Ceres) Mercury is one of four terrestrial planets in the Solar System, which means it is a rocky body like Earth
The Moon will come closer and closer towards Earth, eventually transiting Earth and moving over to the other side. This movement is because of the revolution of Moon around Earth. It is also possible to observe the Moon undergoing a total lunar eclipse which the MESSENGER spacecraft in orbit around Mercury did for the October 8, 2014 lunar eclipse.
The average date for a transit increases over centuries as a result of Mercury's nodal precession and Earth's axial precession. Transits of Mercury occur on a regular basis. As explained in 1882 by Newcomb, [ 8 ] : 477–487 the interval between passages of Mercury through the ascending node of its orbit is 87.969 days, and the interval between ...
Mercury is the second densest planet after Earth. A large metallic core takes up 85% of Mercury’s radius, and it’s also the least explored of the solar system’s terrestrial planets.
A spacecraft has beamed back some of the best close-up photos ever of Mercury’s north pole. The European and Japanese robotic explorer swooped as close as 183 miles (295 kilometers) above ...
Earth's Moon's rotation and orbital periods are tidally locked with each other, so no matter when the Moon is observed from Earth, the same hemisphere of the Moon is always seen. Most of the far side of the Moon was not seen until 1959, when photographs of most of the far side were transmitted from the Soviet spacecraft Luna 3 .
(In the context of sidereal time, "March equinox" or "equinox" or "first point of Aries" is currently a direction, from the center of the Earth along the line formed by the intersection of the Earth's equator and the Earth's orbit around the Sun, toward the constellation Pisces; during ancient times it was toward the constellation Aries.) [2 ...
The two inferior planets, Mercury and Venus, which have orbits that are smaller than the Earth's, exhibit the full range of phases as does the Moon, when seen through a telescope. Their phases are "full" when they are at superior conjunction, on the far side of the Sun as seen from the Earth. It is possible to see them at these times, since ...