The Universe TV - Solar Empire TV - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Robert Strom & Ann Sprague - Jim Al-Khalili: Secrets of the Solar System TV - How the Universe Works TV -
Venus and Mercury: two hostile planets that in the history of universe have suffered very different fates ... Both demonstrate the horrors of the planets that have gone horribly wrong. The Universe s1e7: Inner Planets, History 2007
Mercury is the closest planet to the sun. The planet has no known moons. Mercury has no atmosphere. And it’s known as a Naked Eye planet ... Mercury is the solar system’s tiniest planet. ibid.
The planet orbits the sun in eighty-eight Earth-days. ibid.
A year on Mercury is shorter than a day on the planet. And this sluggish rotation gives Mercury somewhat peculiar weather. ibid.
On Mercury you wouldn’t be able to hear the eruption. ibid.
Its scarred face tells of duels with comets and asteroids. We see a small bleak world where gravity is too weak to hold on to an atmosphere. With no blanket to insulate, Mercury is a planet of temperature extremes. Solar Empire s1e1: A Star is Born, Discovery 1997
I had rather be Mercury, the smallest among seven [planets], revolving round the sun, than the first among five [moons] revolving round Saturn. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, cited Wood’s Dictionary of Quotations 1893
Mercury is the smallest planet in the Solar System (4,878 km diameter). Even three outer satellites are equal or larger than Mercury – Callisto (4,818 km diameter), Ganymede (another satellite of Jupiter) at 5,468 km diameter is significantly larger and the Saturnian’s Satellite Titan (5,150 km diameter) is also larger. Mercury is only 4,878 km in diameter, or about one-third the diameter of the earth. Its volume is only about 6% that of the Earth, so it would take almost 18 Mercurys to make one Earth. Robert Strom & Ann Sprague, Exploring Mercury: The Iron Planet, 2003
Messenger orbited Mercury every twelve hours. In the 4 years from 2011 to 2015 it took more than 200,000 images of its surface. Jim Al-Khalili, Secrets of the Solar System II: Sun & Mercury, BBC 2020
For thousands of years planet Mercury has baffled astronomers. But now its secrets have been revealed. It’s a bizarre world unlike any other. This is a tough world. How the Universe Works s6e8: Mercury, Discovery 2018
Yet this world has been brought to life with water ice, volcanism and tectonic activity. ibid.
Mercury orbits in the innermost solar system, the closest planet to the Sun. Around three times closer than Earth. ibid.
Mercury had a magnetic field … Mercury’s core must be huge. ibid.
Giant cliffs stretching for hundreds of kilometres … known as fault scars. ibid.