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Mercury (Planet): Sun
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The European Space Agency (ESA) has announced a Mercury mission of its own called BepiColombo, set for launch in 2013, to be begin orbiting Mercury in 2019. The mission is a collaboration with Japan and will include two separate orbiters: Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO), built by the ESA; and Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO), built by the Japanese space agency ISAS/JAXA. In addition to studying the planet’s surface, interior structure, and magnetic field, the BepiColombo mission will refine measurements of the relativistic effects of the Sun on Mercury’s orbit.
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The planet was named after the Roman god Mercury. The astronomical symbol for Mercury is a circle on top of a short vertical line with a cross below and a semicircle above the circle. Before the 5th century BCE, the planet Mercury actually had two names, as it was not realized it could alternately appear on one side of the Sun and then the other. Mercury was called Mercury when in the evening sky, but was known as Apollo—in honor of the Roman god of the Sun when it appeared in the morning. Pythagoras is credited for pointing out that they were one and the same.
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The disk of Mercury is very small and will be very difficult to see. A powerful telescope is needed to observe this event and to show clearly how Mercury moves across the solar disk. The disk of Mercury is indeed only 13 arcseconds across (while the solar disk measures about 1800 arcseconds). This corresponds to the size of a 1 EURO coin located at the top of the Eiffel Tower as seen from the ground. Therefore, Mercury will only block 1/20,000th of the Sun's light.
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Because Mercury is so close to the sun, it is hard to directly observe from Earth except during twilight. Mercury makes an appearance indirectly... 13 times each century. Earth observers can watch Mercury pass across the face of the sun, an event called a transit. These rare transits fall within several days of May 8 and November 10.
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In several of the novels and short stories of Kim Stanley Robinson , especially 'Mercurial' in The Planet on the Table( 1986 ) and Blue Mars ( 1996 ), Mercury is the home of a vast city called Terminator. The city rolls around the planet's equator on tracks keeping pace with the planet's rotation, so that the Sun never rises fully above the horizon and the city can avoid the dangerous solar radiation; the motive power comes from solar heat expanding the rails on the day side. The city is ruled by an autocratic dictator called the Lion of Mercury.
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Mercury’s axial tilt is only 0.01 degrees. This is over 300 times smaller than that of Jupiter, which is the second smallest axial tilt of all planets at 3.1 degrees. This means an observer at Mercury’s equator during local noon would never see the sun more than 1/100 of one degree north or south of the zenith. Conversely, at the poles the Sun never rises more than 0.01° above the horizon.
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