Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun and this is also the smallest planet in the solar system. Because Mercury is nearest to the sun, one thought would be that Mercury should be the hottest planet, however that is not so because Venus’s atmosphere is very dense.

Mercury has negligible atmosphere and this makes it to experience very long differential temperatures of about 430c during the day and -180c during night.

The surface is shrouded with craters just like the moon, giant impact basins and cliffs are observed on the planet due to geologic processes.

Mercury does not have any moons and takes 88 Earth days to do a full rotation around the sun, thus its highly fast orbital velocity. This is because of its fast regression across the sky, which made the Roman gods of communication, Mercury. Despite the fact, Mercury comes close to Earth, this is quite difficult to observe because Mercury is very close to the sun and is usually only seen as a small twinkling just before the sun rises or shortly after it sets.