Mercury Stories

Mercury’s Strange Hollows

6 min read

Enigmatic depressions on the surface have puzzled scientists since the 1970s For decades, scientists have been puzzling over strange hollows on Mercury’s surface, thousands of peculiar depressions at a variety of longitudes and latitudes, ranging in size from 60 feet…

Article12 months ago
Image of Stickney Crater on Mars' moon Phobos

10 ‘Super Bowls’ in Our Solar System

4 min read

Here are 10 impressively super, bowl-shaped venues adorning worlds in our solar system, including a couple where we've actually made…touchdowns!

Article3 years ago
Moon rising over America's Square in Washington

January 2022: The Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon, or Ice Moon

15 min read

The Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon, Ice Moon, the Moon after Yule, and the Old Moon.

Article3 years ago
Image of a plane with the full Moon behind it

August 2021: The Next Full Moon is a Blue Moon, the Sturgeon or Green Corn Moon

18 min read

The Next Full Moon is a Blue Moon, and is also known as the Hungry Ghost Moon.

Article3 years ago
A crescent view of Jupiter with its bands of beige, and orange clouds. The Great Red Spot in the right, bottom corner.

10+ Things: Tour of Storms Across the Solar System

8 min read

Our solar system is a stormy place. Join us on a tour of storms.

Article5 years ago

A Closer Look at Mercury’s Spin and Gravity Reveals the Planet’s Inner Solid Core

5 min read

NASA Scientists found evidence that Mercury’s inner core is indeed solid and that it is very nearly the same size as Earth’s inner core.

Article5 years ago

45 Years Ago: Mariner 10 First to Explore Mercury

7 min read

A unique opportunity presented itself in 1973 to send a spacecraft to visit both Venus and Mercury in a single mission. Using gravity assist, a technique theorized for decades but never used before, under favorable conditions a spacecraft sent to…

Article6 years ago

What Scientists Found After Sifting Through Dust in the Solar System

12 min read

Just as dust gathers in corners and along bookshelves in our homes, dust piles up in space too. But when the dust settles in the solar system, it’s often in rings. Several dust rings circle the Sun. The rings trace…

Article6 years ago

NASA Team Studies Middle-aged Sun by Tracking Motion of Mercury

4 min read

Like the waistband of a couch potato in midlife, the orbits of planets in our solar system are expanding. It happens because the Sun’s gravitational grip gradually weakens as our star ages and loses mass. Now, a team of NASA…

Article7 years ago

Small Collisions Make Big Impact on Mercury’s Thin Atmosphere

4 min read

Mercury, our smallest planetary neighbor, has very little to call an atmosphere, but it does have a strange weather pattern: morning micro-meteor showers. Recent modeling along with previously published results from NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft — short for Mercury Surface, Space…

Article7 years ago