"observed until 1639 by Jeremiah Horrocks. The table below includes all historical transits of Mercury from 1605 on: <br> Transit of Mercury A transit of Mercury across the Sun takes place when the planet Mercury passes directly between the Sun and a superior planet, becoming visible against (and hence obscuring a small portion of) the solar disk. During a transit, Mercury appears as a tiny black dot moving across the disk of the Sun. Transits of Mercury with respect to Earth are much more frequent than transits of Venus, with about 13 or 14 per century, in part because Mercury"
"40307 than is the planet Mercury is to the Sun. The outermost planet orbits at a distance similar to the distance of Venus to the Sun and is situated well in the system's liquid water habitable zone. The minimum masses of the planets in the system ranges from three to ten times the mass of the Earth, placing them somewhere between Earth and gas giants like Uranus and Neptune. Dynamical analysis of the innermost planets suggests that planet b is unstable at its age unless it is an ice giant, having migrated from further away. That implies similar for the"
"Inter-crater plains on Mercury Inter-crater plains on Mercury are a land-form consisting of plains between craters on Mercury. Of the eight planets in the solar system, Mercury is the smallest and closest to the Sun. The surface of this planet is similar to the Moon in that it shows characteristics of heavy cratering and plains formed through volcanic eruptions on the surface. These features indicate that Mercury has been geologically inactive for billions of years. Knowledge of Mercury's geology was initially quite limited because observations have only been through the ""Mariner 10"" flyby in 1975 and observations from Earth. The"
"the existence of an asteroid belt between Mercury and the Sun. None of these claims has ever been substantiated after more than forty years of observation. It has been surmised that some of these objects—and other alleged intra-Mercurial objects—may exist, being nothing more than previously unknown comets or small asteroids. No such vulcanoid asteroids have been found, and searches have ruled out any such asteroids larger than about . Neither SOHO nor STEREO has detected a planet inside the orbit of Mercury. Vulcan (hypothetical planet) Vulcan is a small hypothetical planet that was proposed to exist in an orbit between"
"at a distance of about 0.092 AU (compared to the distance of Mercury from the Sun, which is about 0.38 AU). It receives about 25 times more sunlight than Earth does from the Sun. In 2009, NASA's ""Kepler"" spacecraft was completing observing stars on its photometer, the instrument it uses to detect transit events, in which a planet crosses in front of and dims its host star for a brief and roughly regular period of time. In this last test, Kepler observed stars in the Kepler Input Catalog, including Kepler-62; the preliminary light curves were sent to the Kepler science"
"on Earth. Combined with a 3:2 spin–orbit resonance of the planet's rotation around its axis, it also results in complex variations of the surface temperature. The resonance makes a single solar day on Mercury last exactly two Mercury years, or about 176 Earth days. Mercury's orbit is inclined by 7 degrees to the plane of Earth's orbit (the ecliptic), as shown in the diagram on the right. As a result, transits of Mercury across the face of the Sun can only occur when the planet is crossing the plane of the ecliptic at the time it lies between Earth and"
"period in orbit and at the surface. Asteroid belt The asteroid belt is the circumstellar disc in the Solar System located roughly between the orbits of the planets Mars and Jupiter. It is occupied by numerous irregularly shaped bodies called asteroids or minor planets. The asteroid belt is also termed the main asteroid belt or main belt to distinguish it from other asteroid populations in the Solar System such as near-Earth asteroids and trojan asteroids. About half the mass of the belt is contained in the four largest asteroids: Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, and Hygiea. The total mass of the asteroid"
"2015. The ""BepiColombo"" spacecraft will arrive at Mercury in 2025. Mercury appears to have a solid silicate crust and mantle overlying a solid, iron sulfide outer core layer, a deeper liquid core layer, and possibly a solid inner core. Mercury is one of four terrestrial planets in the Solar System, and is a rocky body like Earth. It is the smallest planet in the Solar System, with an equatorial radius of . Mercury is also smaller—albeit more massive—than the largest natural satellites in the Solar System, Ganymede and Titan. Mercury consists of approximately 70% metallic and 30% silicate material. Mercury's"
"quadrangles. They are named after the first craters whose names the IAU approved in July 2015. The map image(s) were taken by the ""Dawn"" space probe. Ceres (dwarf planet) Ceres (; minor-planet designation: 1 Ceres) is the largest object in the asteroid belt that lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, slightly closer to Mars' orbit. With a diameter of , Ceres is the largest of the minor planets, and the only dwarf planet, inside Neptune's orbit. It is the 33rd-largest known body in the Solar System. Ceres is composed of rock and ice and is estimated to comprise"
"lying just between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus in the Solar System. The planet is still glowing red hot. HR 8799 e is the innermost known planet as it orbits closer to its star than the other three known planets in this planetary system. This planet orbits at an estimated distance of 14.5 AU based on the relationship between angular separation measured by direct imaging observations and the star's distance from Earth. The estimated period of this planet if the orbit is face-on is about 50 years. A team of researchers led by Christian Marois at the National Research"
"7 light-years away. Compared to many other planetary systems, the Solar System stands out in lacking planets interior to the orbit of Mercury. The known Solar System also lacks super-Earths (Planet Nine could be a super-Earth beyond the known Solar System). Uncommonly, it has only small rocky planets and large gas giants; elsewhere planets of intermediate size are typical—both rocky and gas—so there is no ""gap"" as seen between the size of Earth and of Neptune (with a radius 3.8 times as large). Also, these super-Earths have closer orbits than Mercury. This led to hypothesis that all planetary systems start"
"approaching Ceres at aphelion, which may constrain Dawn's ability to observe this phenomenon. Note: This info was taken directly from the main article, sources for the material are included there. Asteroids, comets, and meteoroids are all debris remaining from the nebula in which the Solar System formed 4.6 billion years ago. The asteroid belt is located between Mars and Jupiter. It is made of thousands of rocky planetesimals from to a few meters across. These are thought to be debris of the formation of the Solar System that could not form a planet due to Jupiter's gravity. When asteroids collide"
"Ceres (dwarf planet) Ceres (; minor-planet designation: 1 Ceres) is the largest object in the asteroid belt that lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, slightly closer to Mars' orbit. With a diameter of , Ceres is the largest of the minor planets, and the only dwarf planet, inside Neptune's orbit. It is the 33rd-largest known body in the Solar System. Ceres is composed of rock and ice and is estimated to comprise approximately one-third of the mass of the entire asteroid belt. Ceres is the only object in the asteroid belt known to be rounded by its own"
"belt occupies the orbit between Mars and Jupiter, between from the Sun. It is thought to be remnants from the Solar System's formation that failed to coalesce because of the gravitational interference of Jupiter. The asteroid belt contains tens of thousands, possibly millions, of objects over one kilometre in diameter. Despite this, the total mass of the asteroid belt is unlikely to be more than a thousandth of that of Earth. The asteroid belt is very sparsely populated; spacecraft routinely pass through without incident. The outer region of the Solar System is home to the giant planets and their large"
"about 0.05 AU (compared to same distance as Mercury from the Sun, which is about 0.38 AU). It receives 70 times as much sunlight than Earth does from the Sun. In 2009, NASA's Kepler spacecraft was completing observing stars on its photometer, the instrument it uses to detect transit events, in which a planet crosses in front of and dims its host star for a brief and roughly regular period of time. In this last test, Kepler observed stars in the Kepler Input Catalog, including Kepler-62; the preliminary light curves were sent to the Kepler science team for analysis, who"
"all dwarf planets"", and describes it elsewhere as ""the dwarf planet–asteroid 1 Ceres"". NASA continues to refer to Ceres as an asteroid, as do various academic textbooks. Ceres follows an orbit between Mars and Jupiter, within the asteroid belt, with a period of 4.6 Earth years. The orbit is moderately inclined (""i"" = 10.6° compared to 7° for Mercury and 17° for Pluto) and moderately eccentric (""e"" = 0.08 compared to 0.09 for Mars). The diagram illustrates the orbits of Ceres (blue) and several planets (white and gray). The segments of orbits below the ecliptic are plotted in darker colors,"
"Vulcan (hypothetical planet) Vulcan is a small hypothetical planet that was proposed to exist in an orbit between Mercury and the Sun. Attempting to explain peculiarities of Mercury's orbit, the 19th-century French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier hypothesized that they were the result of another planet, which he named ""Vulcan"". A number of reputable investigators became involved in the search for Vulcan, and despite occasional claimed observations, no such planet was ever confirmed. Peculiarities in Mercury's orbit have now been explained by Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. Searches of data gathered by NASA's two ""STEREO"" spacecraft have failed to find"
"Asteroid belt The asteroid belt is the circumstellar disc in the Solar System located roughly between the orbits of the planets Mars and Jupiter. It is occupied by numerous irregularly shaped bodies called asteroids or minor planets. The asteroid belt is also termed the main asteroid belt or main belt to distinguish it from other asteroid populations in the Solar System such as near-Earth asteroids and trojan asteroids. About half the mass of the belt is contained in the four largest asteroids: Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, and Hygiea. The total mass of the asteroid belt is approximately 4% that of the"
"() is the ruling planet of Gemini and is exalted in Virgo and/or Aquarius. In classical Roman mythology, Mercury is the messenger of the gods, noted for his speed and swiftness. Echoing this, the scorching, airless world Mercury circles the Sun on the fastest orbit of any planet. Mercury takes only 88 days to orbit the Sun, spending about 7.33 days in each sign of the zodiac. Mercury is so close to the Sun that only a brief period exists after the Sun has set where it can be seen with the naked eye, before following the Sun beyond the"
"preventing it from interacting directly with its atmosphere and instead creating its own region, called a magnetosphere, composed of a plasma very different from that of the solar wind. The magnetosphere of Saturn is the second–largest magnetosphere in the Solar System after that of Jupiter. As with Earth's magnetosphere, the boundary separating the solar wind's plasma from that within Saturn's magnetosphere is called the magnetopause. The magnetopause distance from the planet's center at the subsolar point varies widely from 16 to 27 R (R=60,330 km is the equatorial radius of Saturn). The magnetopause's position depends on the pressure exerted by"
"2060 Chiron 2060 Chiron (), provisional designation , and also known as 95P/Chiron, is a small solar system body (or minor planet) in the outer Solar System, orbiting the Sun between Saturn and Uranus. Discovered in 1977 by Charles Kowal, it was the first-identified member of a new class of objects now known as centaurs—bodies orbiting between the asteroid belt and the Kuiper belt. Although it was initially called an asteroid and classified only as a minor planet with the designation ""2060 Chiron"", it was later found to exhibit behavior typical of a comet. Today it is classified as both"
"the planet’s atmosphere and a void is created behind the planet. In the case of the Earth’s moon and other bodies without a magnetic field or atmosphere, the body’s surface interacts with the solar wind and a void is created behind the body. Magnetopause The magnetopause is the abrupt boundary between a magnetosphere and the surrounding plasma. For planetary science, the magnetopause is the boundary between the planet’s magnetic field and the solar wind. The location of the magnetopause is determined by the balance between the pressure of the dynamic planetary magnetic field and the dynamic pressure of the solar"
"Earth and the Sun. For comparison, Mercury, our Solar System's innermost planet, takes 88 days to orbit at a distance of about 0.38 AU. The size of TRAPPIST-1 and the close orbit of TRAPPIST-1d around it means that the star as seen from the planet appears 5.5 times as large as the Sun from the Earth. While a planet at TRAPPIST-1d's distance from our Sun would be a scorched world, the low luminosity of TRAPPIST-1 means that the planet gets only 1.043 times the sunlight that Earth receives, placing it within the inner part of the conservative habitable zone. The"
"into an elliptical orbit, then chemical rockets will fire to deposit the mapper probe into a circular orbit. Both probes will operate for one terrestrial year. The mapper probe carries an array of spectrometers similar to those on ""MESSENGER"", and will study the planet at many different wavelengths including infrared, ultraviolet, X-ray and gamma ray. Mercury (planet) Mercury is the smallest and innermost planet in the Solar System. Its orbital period around the Sun of 87.97 days is the shortest of all the planets in the Solar System. It is named after the Roman deity Mercury, the messenger of the"
"consists mostly of planets the size of Neptune and smaller, down to smaller than Mercury. There are types of planets that do not exist in the Solar System: super-Earths and mini-Neptunes, which could be rocky like Earth or a mixture of volatiles and gas like Neptune—a radius of 1.75 times that of Earth is a possible dividing line between the two types of planet. There are hot Jupiters that orbit very close to their star and may evaporate to become chthonian planets, which are the leftover cores. Another possible type of planet is carbon planets, which form in systems with"
"the ""New Horizons"" space probe in June 2015. Under this definition, the Earth–Moon system is not currently a double planet; although the Moon is massive enough to cause the Earth to make a noticeable revolution around this center of mass, this point nevertheless lies well within Earth. However, the Moon migrates outward from Earth at a rate of approximately per year; in a few hundred million years, the Earth–Moon system's center of mass will lie outside Earth, which would make it a double-planet system. The center of mass of the Jupiter–Sun system lies outside the surface of the Sun, though"
"Since the dawn of the Space Age, close observation by space probes has found that Earth and the other planets share characteristics such as volcanism, hurricanes, tectonics, and even hydrology. Planets are generally divided into two main types: large low-density giant planets, and smaller rocky terrestrials. There are eight planets in the Solar System. In order of increasing distance from the Sun, they are the four terrestrials, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, then the four giant planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Six of the planets are orbited by one or more natural satellites. Several thousands of planets around other"
"inferior planets Mercury and Venus and the superior planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, dwarf planet Pluto or with stars take place when these objects are at the same time in conjunction to Sun while Mercury or Venus are at inferior conjunction. Frequently the second conjunction takes place when both bodies are too close to the Sun in order to be seen, while the other conjunctions are easily visible, especially if the other body is Jupiter, Saturn or a bright star. This was the case with the conjunctions of Venus and Mercury —which happen on a 480-year cycle having to do"
"in the image, with bits going to the right and more significant digits below. Earth The solar system, showing the Sun and the planets in the order of their position from the Sun: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. (Pluto has since been reclassified as a dwarf planet by the International Astronomical Union, but it was still considered a planet at the time the message was transmitted.) The Earth is the third planet from the Sun; its graphic is shifted up to identify it as the planet from which the signal was sent. Additionally, the human"
"around 300 nT, which is weaker than that of Jupiter's moon Ganymede. Mercury's magnetic field is weaker than Earth's because its core had cooled and solidified more quickly than Earth's. Although Mercury's magnetic field is much weaker than Earth's magnetic field, it is still strong enough to deflect the solar wind, inducing a magnetosphere. Because Mercury's magnetic field is weak while the interplanetary magnetic field it interacts with in its orbit is relatively strong, the solar wind dynamic pressure at Mercury′s orbit is also three times larger than at Earth. Whether the magnetic field changed to any significant degree between"
"Fifth planet (hypothetical) In the history of astronomy, a handful of Solar System bodies have been counted as the fifth planet from the Sun. Under the present definition of a planet, Jupiter is counted as the fifth. There are three main ideas regarding hypothetical planets between Mars and Jupiter. During the early 19th century, as asteroids were discovered, they were considered planets. Jupiter became the sixth planet with the discovery of Ceres in 1801. Soon, three more asteroids, Pallas (1802), Juno (1804), and Vesta (1807) were discovered. They were counted as separate planets, despite the fact that they shared an"
"In December, FTEs roll over the north pole; in July they roll over the south pole. Magnetic fields similar to Earth's are common throughout known space and many undergo similar flux transfer events. During its second flyby of the planet on October 6, 2008, the NASA probe MESSENGER discovered that Mercury’s magnetic field shows a magnetic reconnection rate ten times higher than Earth's. Mercury's proximity to the Sun only accounts for about a third of the reconnection rate observed by MESSENGER and the cause of this discrepancy is not currently known. Most recently, it has been found that the same"
"initially named after Ceres, but when cerium was named, its discoverer changed the name to palladium, after the second asteroid, 2 Pallas. The categorization of Ceres has changed more than once and has been the subject of some disagreement. Johann Elert Bode believed Ceres to be the ""missing planet"" he had proposed to exist between Mars and Jupiter, at a distance of 419 million km (2.8 AU) from the Sun. Ceres was assigned a planetary symbol, and remained listed as a planet in astronomy books and tables (along with 2 Pallas, 3 Juno, and 4 Vesta) for half a century."