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The eccentricity of Mercury's orbit makes this resonance stable—at perihelion, when the solar tide is strongest, the Sun is nearly stationary in Mercury's sky. [ 130 ] The 3:2 resonant tidal locking is stabilized by the variance of the tidal force along Mercury's eccentric orbit, acting on a permanent dipole component of Mercury's mass ...
The orbital period (also revolution period) is the amount of time a given astronomical object takes to complete one orbit around another object. In astronomy, it usually applies to planets or asteroids orbiting the Sun, moons orbiting planets, exoplanets orbiting other stars, or binary stars.
At perihelion, Mercury's orbital angular velocity slightly exceeds the rotational velocity, making the Sun appear to go retrograde. Four days after perihelion, the Sun's normal apparent motion resumes. From the moment the top of the Sun can be seen to the moment someone can see a full circle, a sunrise would take almost 6 hours. [2]
The orbit of the planet Mercury lies interior to that of the Earth, and thus it can come into an inferior conjunction with the Sun. When Mercury is near the node of its orbit, it passes through the orbital plane of the Earth. If an inferior conjunction occurs as Mercury is passing through its orbital node, the planet can be seen to pass across ...
Planet orbiting the Sun in a circular orbit (e=0.0) Planet orbiting the Sun in an orbit with e=0.5 Planet orbiting the Sun in an orbit with e=0.2 Planet orbiting the Sun in an orbit with e=0.8 The red ray rotates at a constant angular velocity and with the same orbital time period as the planet, =. S: Sun at the primary focus, C: Centre of ...
Mercury retrograde refers to the period of time when Mercury moves slower than the Earth around the sun – causing it to appear to spin backward in the night sky.
Kepler mistakenly believed he had captured Mercury moving in orbit across the sun in May 1607, but he later retracted his report 11 years later and determined he had observed a sunspot group.
Due to Mercury's slow rotational speed and fast orbit around the Sun, its synodic rotation period of 176 Earth days is three times longer than its sidereal rotational period (sidereal day) and twice as long as its orbital period. [8]