Mercury
A guide to the planets | Mercury
Mercury is the smallest of the planets in our Solar System and the closest to the Sun.
Mercury gets better and better this month, including a meeting with the Moon. This is how you can see it
Mercury | How to observe the planet
Mercury returns favourably to our twilight skies in April 2023. Find out how to locate it and what you can see through a telescope.
BepiColombo 6th Mercury flyby images
Gallery | Transit of Mercury
Facts about Mercury transits, including when they occur and photos of the most recent events.
Why is Mercury called Mercury?
Mercury fans be patient! The planet's visibility is due to improve throughout March
Planet Mercury is hard to see at the start of March 2024, but its position in the night sky will improve as the month comes to a close.
Why is Venus the hottest planet, if Mercury is the closest to the Sun?
Mercury orbits closer to the Sun, so why isn't it hotter than Venus?
Bepi Colombo spacecraft sees electron rain generate x-ray aurora on Mercury
Interactions between solar wind and Mercury revealed during Bepi Colombo's close flyby.
Bepi Colombo captures amazing images of Mercury during close flyby
The European spacecraft reveals the innermost planet's rocky features in a new series of images.
Observing guide | See planet Mercury near Spica
See if you can spot Mercury and Spica in daylight on 22 September 2020 at 14:30 BST (13:30 UT).
Was Mercury stripped away by a colossal impact and the solar wind?
The planet Mercury’s outer layers could have been stripped by a huge collision and a stream of charged particles emanating from the Sun.
Understanding Mercury's magnetic poles
We spoke to a BepiColombo scientist to find out more about Mercury's poles, and how studying them could help us understand our own planet better.
Imaging for science | How to photograph Mercury and Venus
Using filters reveals the subtleties in the Solar System’s innermost planets, as The Sky at Night's Pete Lawrence reveals.
Gallery | Transit of Mercury, 11 November 2019
A selection of some of the best images of the Mercury transit sent in by readers.
How to photograph the transit of Mercury
There’s a long wait if you miss the planet crossing the Sun’s disc on 11 November, so prepare now if you're planning on photographing the event.
Transit of Mercury, 11 November 2019: what it is and how to see it
The last transit of Mercury until 2032 occurs on 11 November 2019, but the best views will be from outside the UK. Here’s how to watch safely from wherever you are.
Bepi Colombo: Mission to Mercury
October 2018 saw the launch of Bepi Colombo, a European mission to study Mercury, the innermost world in our Solar System. Govert Schilling reveals why we’re going, and how we’ll get there.
Mercury is tectonically active
Mercury can be grouped together with Earth as another tectonically active planet in our Solar System, according to a study that used images captured by the MESSENGER space probe.
The search for Vulcan
Thursday 8 September 2016 marks 50 years to the day that audiences sat down to watch the first episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. Science writer Paul Cockburn explores how 19th century astronomers once believed that a planet called Vulcan genuinely existed in orbit around our own Sun.