Why is Mercury cold if it's so close to the Sun?

Despite being very close to the Sun, the planet Mercury is not hot all the time. In fact, records point out that the planet has an unstable temperature and that it can be very cold at night. Some hasty conclusions can be made when we observe the Solar System without taking into account the characteristics of each planet.

In fact, this is what happens to Mercury, the planet that is closest to the Sun and the smallest in the world. Solar system. It is 57.9 million kilometers from the Sun's star.

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According to the measurements that have already been carried out, the temperatures of the planet closest to the Sun can be 430°C to -170°C because of the inability to conserve thermal averages and because of the craters they deposit ice.

Why isn't the planet Mercury always hot?

Mercury is very hot during the day, reaching up to 430°C, but because it does not have an atmosphere that can retain the heat, the temperature drops during the night, as well as it is also cold in the regions without luminosity of the planet and in the region polar.

Photo: Shutterstock.

In these places the temperatures are very low and can reach -170°C. Including, the appearance of the cold and icy regions is very similar to the Moon, due to the visible craters in NASA images.

In the 1990s, astronomers observed what appeared to be ice sheets in the planet's craters. Then, in 2015, data was collected on Mercury by the Messenger spacecraft and, after analysis, it was concluded that the ice deposits on Mercury can be up to 3,400 km.

But, to make it easier to understand Mercury being cold and having ice, we can use Earth as a comparison.

Planet Earth has an atmosphere that manages to retain the heat that occurs during the day, so during the night temperatures do not drop drastically. Mercury, on the other hand, does not have an atmosphere that does this function, so temperatures reach negative and extreme marks.

Another point of influence is that, on Mercury, a year has 88 days and it does not have an inclined rotation axis like the Earth. Therefore, light manages to reach all points on the planet, which does not create the seasons and their temperature changes that we know.

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