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abaldwin360:

Mercury has a (very tiny) moon!

This discovery image provides the first evidence that Mercury has a small natural satellite or moon. Visible as a small bright spot in an image taken yesterday by the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) Wide Angle Camera (WAC), the moon is approximately 70 meters (230 feet) in diameter and orbits Mercury at a mean distance of 14,300 km (8,890 miles). A proposal to name the moon “Caduceus,” after the staff carried by the Roman god Mercury, has been submitted by the MESSENGER team to the International Astronomical Union, the body responsible for assigning names to celestial objects. 

This was an April fools joke by the way… look at the first letters of each word in the mission mentioned at the end of the article. *troll face*

Mercury has a (very tiny) moon!

This discovery image provides the first evidence that Mercury has a small natural satellite or moon. Visible as a small bright spot in an image taken yesterday by the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) Wide Angle Camera (WAC), the moon is approximately 70 meters (230 feet) in diameter and orbits Mercury at a mean distance of 14,300 km (8,890 miles). A proposal to name the moon “Caduceus,” after the staff carried by the Roman god Mercury, has been submitted by the MESSENGER team to the International Astronomical Union, the body responsible for assigning names to celestial objects. 

discoverynews:

Mercury Makes Precise Measurement of the Sun

In what sounds like an astronomical “David and Goliath” tale, the smallest planet in the solar system (no, not Pluto, the other one) has helped astronomers precisely measure the width of the largest thing in the solar system — the sun.

Wait. I hear you cry. Do astronomers have nothing better than to measure the girth of our nearest star? Besides, we should know that already… shouldn’t we?

In the sage words of Bad Astronomer Phil Plait: “Sometimes the simplest things can be the hardest, I suppose.” And he’d be right.

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