As you know, eight planets are in the solar system, and each of them differs in size and composition, and is also at different distance from the sun. The farther from our star is Neptune, but which planet is closest to the sun and why it is still not the hottest in the solar system? About this writes Live Science.

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The closest planet to the Sun is the small planet Mercury, which is about 2.5 times smaller than the earth in size. The average distance from Mercury to the Sun is 58 million km. For comparison, the distance of the Earth from the Sun is 150 million km, and Neptune - about 4.5 billion km.

It is interesting that Mercury is a planet that astronomers know less than the rest of the worlds of the solar system and this is largely due to the fact that it is difficult to get to this planet with spacecraft.

Mercury is a strange, coated with craters and devoid of atmosphere, the world. It is known that some craters in Mercury never see the light of the sun. Mercury also has the most sharp temperatures among all the planets of the solar system. The side facing the sun is always very hot, and the back of the planet at the same time becomes extremely cold. More precisely, on the side of Mercury facing our star, the temperature rises to 427 degrees Celsius, and on the reverse side is dropped to minus 184 degrees Celsius. This does not mean that Mercury is always facing the sun with only one side, because the planet rotates all the time.

Sudden temperatures on Mercury are connected with the fact that the planet does not have an atmosphere that could adjust the temperature. Mercury has too small gravity to hold the atmosphere and even if it were, then strong radiation of the sun, as well as a sunny wind, due to the close location of the planet, would still destroy any atmosphere.

Given the huge temperature on Mercury, you might think that this is the hottest planet in the solar system. But this is not so. Despite the fact that Venus is on average at a distance of 108 million km from the sun, it is more hot than Mercury. The fact is that Venus has a very thick thick atmosphere that holds heat. Therefore, the temperature on the surface of Venus reaches 482 degrees Celsius.

Interestingly, in Mercury, the duration of one day is 1.5 Mercury years. More precisely, that the day on this strange planet lasts 58 earthly days, and a year - 88 earthly days.

Mercury has no satellites, and extreme conditions on the planet do not allow to exist on its surface of water in a liquid form, which is a key component for creating life. That is, there is no life on Mercury.

From close range, Mercury studied only two spacecraft: in 1974-1975-" In 2026, the Bepicolombo spacecraft should enter the orbit around Mercury, which will enable astronomers to get a lot of useful information about this mysterious little -studied stony planet.

As Focus already wrote, recently Bepicolombo sent new photos of Mercury to the ground, taken at close range.

Focus also wrote about which the planet in the solar system actually is the closest to the ground.

Focus wrote that physicists discovered a new form of magnetism. Scientists have long assumed that alternatives existed, but only now they managed to confirm this.