About Mercury
Mercury is a rare planet. It completes an orbit every 87.97 days and swings within 0.308 AU of the Sun at perihelion.
It travels the Solar System entirely alone — not a single natural satellite.
Rare planet 48 EP
Mercury
Position computed live · planets
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Live ephemeris
This object moves — fetching its current position…
Score breakdown
· 2 badgesRare 50 pts → Epic
- Major planet +40
- Has a proper name +8
Total score 48
2 more points to reach Epic.
Badges
- Major planet · +40
- Has a proper name · +8
Trivia
What it actually is
- No moons. It travels the Solar System entirely alone — not a single natural satellite.
Sense of scale
- Against Earth. It is only 38% of Earth's width — you could pack about 17.8 of it inside our planet.
- Ground to cover. Its whole surface adds up to about 74.8 million km² — about 50% of Earth's dry land.
- Walk around it. Walking right round its equator, eight hours a day, would take about 12.6 months.
By the numbers
- Size. About 4880 km across.
What's in a name
- Named. Notable enough to have earned a proper name, not just a catalogue number.
Properties
- aphelion au
- 0.4667
- color
- #9c8a7a
- diameter km
- 4880
- eccentricity
- 0.2056
- inclination
- 7.005
- name
- Mercury
- named
- yes
- num moons
- 0
- orbital period days
- 87.969
- perihelion au
- 0.3075
- radius km
- 2440
- semi major au
- 0.3871
How to see it
Like any astronomical target, Mercury is best seen from a dark site away from city lights, and when it is above the horizon depends on your latitude and the time of year. Because it moves against the background stars, the live position panel on this page tracks where it is right now. The visibility panel above works out tonight's viewing window for your saved location.
Why Mercury is a rare planet
Mercury scores 48 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 2 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 2 science badges — Major planet and Has a proper name — each earned for a real, measurable property of the object. Rarity on Spacedle is never random: the more remarkable an object's astrophysics, the more badges it collects, the higher it scores, and the rarer it ranks.