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Mercury (Planet): Moons
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The Romans named the planet after the fleet-footed messenger god Mercury, probably for its fast apparent motion in the twilight sky. The astronomical symbol for Mercury, displayed at the top of the infobox, is a stylized version of the god's head and winged hat atop his caduceus, an ancient astrological symbol. Before the 5th century BC, Greek astronomers believed the planet to be two separate objects: one visible only at sunrise, the other only at sunset. In India, the planet was named Budha (बुध), after the son of Chandra (the Moon). The Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese cultures refer to the planet as the water star (水星), based on the Five Elements. The Hebrews named it Kokhav Hamah (כוכב חמה), "the star of the hot one" ("the hot one" being the Sun).
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Sun-scorched Mercury is only slightly larger than Earth's Moon. Like the Moon, Mercury has very little atmosphere to stop impacts and it is covered with craters. Mercury's dayside is super heated by the Sun, but at night temperatures drop hundreds of degrees below freezing. Ice may even survive in a few craters.
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Mercury was named by the Romans after the fleet-footed messenger of the gods because it seemed to move more quickly than any other planet. It is the closest planet to the Sun, and second smallest planet in the solar system. Its diameter is 40% smaller than Earth and 40% larger than the Moon. It is even smaller than Jupiter's moon Ganymede and Saturn's moon Titan.
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Mercury is the nearest planet in the Solar System to the Sun. It is very small. It is covered in craters, and looks like the Moon. It is very hot every day, and very cold every night.
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Most of what is known about the internal structure of Mercury comes from data acquired by the Mariner 10 spacecraft that flew past the planet in 1973 and 1974. Mercury is about a third of the size of Earth, yet its density is comparable to that of Earth. This indicates that Mercury has a large core roughly the size of Earth's moon or about 75% of the planet's radius. The core is likely composed of 60 to 70% iron by mass. Mariner 10's measurements of the planet reveals a dipolar magnetic field possibly produced by a partially molten core. A solid rocky mantle surrounds the core with a thin crust of about 100 kilometers. (Copyright Calvin J. Hamilton)
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A short story by Isaac Asimov , ' The Dying Night ' (1956), is a murder mystery in which astronomers from Mercury, the Moon , and a fictitious space station are implicated in a murder. The dynamics and living conditions of each of these locations is key to discovering which astronomer is guilty.
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