Europe's BepiColombo mission will enter orbit of the solar system's first planet in about two years, but it's been whizzing past Mercury regularly as it lines up its approach. The ESA reports that ...

This means that, from our perspective on Earth, it appears as if Mercury is moving backward in its orbit around the sun. Mercury in retrograde is not a rare or sudden occurrence. It happens three ...

Mention the word “mercury” and one of two things comes to mind: the silvery metal that is liquid at normal temperatures, or ...

Mercury will be easier to see on subsequent ... to call it a planetary alignment because planets do not align. They all orbit the sun in the same plane, called the ecliptic, which is identical ...

As the orbit of Mercury around the Sun is tilted compared with the orbit of the Earth around the Sun, the planet normally appears to pass above or below our nearest star. A transit can only take ...

Mercury has the shortest and fastest orbit around the Sun and experiences dramatic temperature changes as it rotates. It is a world of extremes. Explore facts about our solar system's fastest planet.

On Feb. 20, 1962, astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth as he flew aboard Project Mercury’s ...

Dwarf planet Pluto, on the other hand, has a fairly squashed orbit. Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, has the most eccentric orbit, with the difference between the distance at perihelion and ...