Mercury
is the second smallest planet; only Pluto is smaller. Mercury’s
diameter
is 4879 km, while Earth’s is 12,756 km. In fact, Mercury
is not much larger than our Moon, which has a diameter of 3475
km.
| Odd
but true: The
Sun’s diameter is 1.38 x 106 km, making it about
286 times larger than Mercury. So if you were to make a scale model
of Mercury and the Sun, representing Mercury by a marble 1.0 cm
across, the sphere representing the Sun would be 2.86 m in diameter! |
|
