Admit it isn't the sexiest planet. There's no atmosphere like venus. It isn't an object of exploration like mars. It isn't big like jupiter in. It doesn't have the beautiful rings of saturn. I'm guessing most of you haven't really given to thoughts about mercury. And i'm reasonably confident in saying that because most space agencies and astronomers don't really think about mercury either more on that in a bit i i should probably do a quick tale of the tape for mercury. Mercury is about point. Four astronomical units from the sun and an astronomical unit is the average distance from the earth to the sun the massive of mercury is approximately thirty eight percent that of earth. the planet has no discernible atmosphere. Which makes it more like the moon than any other body in the solar system. One of the most unique aspects of mercury is that a day on mercury is longer than its year. One year on mercury is eighty seven point nine earth days and one solar day on mercury is one one hundred seventy six days. Mercury is the second hottest planet in the solar system behind venus. The only reason why venus's hotter is that it has an incredibly thick atmosphere that traps heat. Mercury has no atmosphere whatsoever during the day surface. Temperatures on mercury can reach eight hundred and forty degrees fahrenheit or four hundred fifty degrees celsius. Whoever on the nightside of the planet temperatures can dip down to minus two hundred seventy five fahrenheit or minus one hundred and seventy celsius mercury was known to ancient peoples. But they didn't really know much about it because of how close it is to the sun it would only appear just before sunrise and the eastern horizon or just after sunset on the western horizon. The name mercury came from the roman. God mercury who was the messenger of the gods ancient china. It was known as the our star and in modern chinese korean japanese and vietnamese. It is literally known as the water star. The indians associated the planet with buddha and the day wednesday and the germans associated with the god odin and oddly enough wednesdays the mayan people associated mercury with an owl and thought that it was the messenger to the underworld