Mercury

Images, Videos & Interactives

Messenger: Mercury

Messenger: Mercury

Planets of Our Solar System

transit of Mercury across the face of the Sun

Mercury's north pole

Messenger: Mercury

Mercury: Vivaldi Crater

For Students

Mercury summary

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Remarkable new details of Pluto's largest moon Charon are revealed in this image from New Horizons' Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), taken late on July 13, 2015 from a distance of 289,000 miles

Why Is Pluto No Longer a Planet?

Solar system illustration. (Sun; planets)

A Model of the Cosmos

Time lapse photo showing transit of Mercury across Sun's disk, November 15, 1999. Image from the Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE) satellite.

Transit of Mercury

Planet Mercury photographed by the MESSENGER spacecraft. Colors produced by images from color base map imaging. Colors are not what Mercury looks to human eye. See NOTES:

7 Important Dates in Mercury History

solar eclipse, sun, moon, astronomy, space

How Do You Tell the Difference Between Total, Annular, Solar, and Lunar Eclipses?

Discover

Close up of periodic table, focus on nickel, copper, zinc, palladium, silver, cadmium

When Was the Periodic Table Invented?

Franklin D. Roosevelt, who formulated the Four Freedoms.

7 Alphabet Soup Agencies that Stuck Around

Moonrise over Tucson, Arizona

Why Doesn’t Arizona Observe Daylight Saving Time?

Bar graph of the United States Death Toll during major events. Infogram chart.

U.S. Death Toll During Major Events

An ancient egyptian hieroglyphic painted carving showing the falcon headed god Horus seated on a throne and holding a golden fly whisk. Before him are the Pharoah Seti and the goddess Isis. Interior wall of the temple to Osiris at Abydos, Egypt.

11 Egyptian Gods and Goddesses

Hindu Holi Festival celebrations with colored water, powder and colorful flower petals thrown over celebrants at a Hindu temple in Mathura, Uttar Pradesh, India on March 24, 2021.

Holi: Festival of Colors

Aphrodite. Greek mythology. Sculpture. Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love and beauty.

12 Greek Gods and Goddesses

Mercury: Related Content

Written and fact-checked by The Information Architects of Encyclopaedia Britannica

News •

Every planet of our solar system is lining up in the February night sky • Feb. 25, 2025, 5:02 PM ET (AP)

Photos and Videos

Messenger: Mercury

Messenger: Mercury

transit of Mercury across the face of the Sun

Mercury's north pole

Messenger: Mercury

Mercury: Vivaldi Crater

Mercury: Caloris Basin

Discover the length of days and years on Mercury

The scale of the universe: Earth's solar system and beyond

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View of the Andromeda Galaxy (Messier 31, M31).

Astronomy and Space Quiz

View of the Andromeda Galaxy (Messier 31, M31).

Astronomy and Space Quiz

Saturn. Saturn and its rings. Second largest planet of the solar system. Space Art

Planets and the Earth’s Moon

M101 (NGC 5457, The Pinwheel Galaxy). Hubble Space Telescope image of face-on spiral galaxy Messier 101 (M101). Largest most detailed photo of a spiral galaxy that has ever been released from Hubble. Created from 1994-2003

Everything in Space in a 25-Minute Quiz

1 July 2002: The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) satellite reveals a massive solar eruption more than 30 times the Earth's diameter. The eruption formed when a loop of a magnetic field over the surface of the Sun trapped hot gas.

Brightest Star in the Solar System

Nicolaus Copernicus. Nicolas Copernicus (1473-1543) Polish astronomer. In 1543 he published, forward proof of a Heliocentric (sun centered) universe. Coloured stipple engraving published London 1802. De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri vi.

All About Astronomy

The orbits of the planets and other elements of the solar system, including asteroids, Kuiper belt, Oort cloud, comet

Space Odyssey

This artist's concept illustrates Kepler-16b, the first planet known to definitively orbit two stars -- what's called a circumbinary planet. The planet, which can be seen in the foreground, was discovered by NASA's Kepler mission. The two orbiting stars r

Extrasolar Planets

List

Planet Mercury photographed by the MESSENGER spacecraft. Colors produced by images from color base map imaging. Colors are not what Mercury looks to human eye. See NOTES:

7 Important Dates in Mercury History

Demystified

Remarkable new details of Pluto's largest moon Charon are revealed in this image from New Horizons' Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), taken late on July 13, 2015 from a distance of 289,000 miles

Why Is Pluto No Longer a Planet?