Because of this 3:2 resonance, a day on Mercury (sun rise to sun rise) is 176 Earth days long as shown by the following diagram. During Mercury's distant past, its period of rotation may have been faster. Scientists speculate that its rotation could have been as rapid as 8 hours, ...
The magnetic field of Mercury, Earth, and other terrestrial-type bodies is thought to originate from an internal dynamo generated by convection in an electrically conductive metallic region of the planet1. A dynamo may be generated when sufficient thermally and/or chemically convective motion is comb...
Orbit, rotation, and longitudeMercury has the most eccentric orbit of all the planets; its eccentricity is 0.21 with its distance from the Sun ranging from 46,000,000 to 70,000,000 km (29,000,000 to 43,000,000 mi). It takes 87.969 Earth days to complete an orbit. The diagram on ...