Mercury Planet Color
Planets have the colors that they have because of what they are made of and how their surfaces or atmospheres reflect and absorb sunlight. Mercury has a dark gray, rocky surface which is covered with a thick layer of dust.
Mercury is slate gray because it has a high iron content and little atmosphere. Learn how the other planets in our solar system got their distinctive hues and what they reveal about their origins and compositions.
The planet Mercury color is a dark gray surface, broken up by craters large and small. The color of Mercury's surface is just textures of gray, with the occasional lighter patch, such as the newly
Learn how Mercury's composition and atmosphere affect its color and appearance from space. See photos and videos of Mercury's surface, craters, and atmosphere.
This colorful view of Mercury was produced by using images from the color base map imaging campaign during MESSENGER's primary mission. These colors are not what Mercury would look like to the human eye, but rather the colors enhance the chemical, mineralogical, and physical differences between the rocks that make up Mercury's surface.
Mercury is the smallest and closest planet to the sun, with a pure gray surface. NASA studies reveal that graphite, a form of carbon, is the main cause of the gray color, buried beneath the surface and exposed by meteor impacts.
Mercury has a gray, slightly brownish appearance, somewhat similar to Earth's Moon. Our best global pictures of the planet were made using images partially comprised of light from outside our visual range. Image processors have tried to correct the planet's color over the years, as in this Voyager 2 image of Uranus and Neptune Uranus
Learn how Mercury's atmosphere, exosphere, and surface composition influence its visible color, a range of shades from dark grey to brown, with subtle hints of blue and red. Discover the color variations across different terrain and the insights they provide into the planet's geological history.
Historically, humans knew Mercury by different names depending on whether it was an evening star or a morning star. By about 350 BC, the ancient Greeks had realized the two stars were one. 20 They knew the planet as Stilbn, meaning quottwinklingquot, and Herms, for its fleeting motion, 21 a name that is retained in modern Greek Ermis. 22
Mercury Mosaic view of Mercury, showing about half the hemisphere of the planet that was illuminated when Mariner 10 departed the planet during its first flyby in March 1974. The landscape is dominated by large impact basins and craters with extensive intercrater plains. Half of the enormous Caloris impact basin is discernible as a slightly darker region near the terminator shadow line just
