Mercurio - Qué tipo de planeta es? - What's its deal?

Mercury is the most closest planet to the Sun. So it is very hot during the day. But then, during the night, the temperature drops drastically.

Why is that?

Isn't it still too close to the Sun?

Indeed, it is.

But its atmosphere is so thin that it can't retain the heat.

Lack of atmosphere also means that when you looked up the sky during the day from the surface of Mercury, you wouldn't see anything but a white sun in the pitch black sky. And that white sun would appear three times larger than our Sun. The night, on the other hand, promises the most impressive spectacle thanks to solar winds.

But what do I mean with "day" and "night"?

A day on Mercury is very long. Mercury takes 59 Earth days to make one full rotation. A year, on the other hand, goes fast. It took Mercury only 88 days to revolve around the sun.

This post might be becoming a bit too technical for your taste, so let me come to the point: One Mercury solar day equals 176 Earth days - just over two years on Mercury. So if we lived on Mercury, we would celebrate two birthdays and get two years older in just one day and we could be living in eternal sunrise by walking to the east.

And living on Mercury is not as impossible as you might think.

It is thought that there is water ice inside deep craters at its poles and its thin atmosphere contains oxygen! It may be the most habitable planet in our solar system besides Earth. But the most interesting thing about Mercury is not its habitability, its day and night temperature difference or its exceptionally long days, but the Sun's motion in its sky. If you were at the right place at the right time on Mercury, you would see the Sun stops at some point, then begins going backward, sets and then rises again.

What's Mercury's deal? Who knows? But it has a great deal of eccentricities!