Short Post

Did you know that scientist have a hard time taking pictures of Mercury because it is so close to the sun?

Orbiting

When something just spins in a circle it's called "rotating" and when something spins around another object it's called "revolving" but when something rotates and revolves it's called "orbiting."
The earth takes 24 hours to rotate which is one earth day.
And a full circle around the sun is one year.
On Mercury it takes 59 earth days to rotate one time.
And just under 30 earth days of being hot and 30 earth days of cold dark.
All that to say that it's 88 earth days to make one Mercury year.
Well that is enough on Mercury for today.

(Sorry there aren't any pictures!)

Mercury!!!

Mercury is the next planet to the sun and so we are not able to observe it well because of the sun.
The only space craft that has ever gotten very close is the "Mariner 10."
The Mariner 10 got some information on Mercury but not much.
Mercury, during the day, gets up to 750 degrees!
So being so close to the sun it would never get cold? Not!
During the day it's unbelievably hot but at night it gets to be -300 degrees!
COLD!!!
Well the reason that Mercury doesn't have the layer of gasses called atmosphere to keep the heat in so at night it just keeps getting colder and colder and colder and colder.
Because Mercury doesn't have any atmosphere the sky is always gray.