Question about Mercury Solar Day
Posted: Sat Oct 08, 2011 2:33 pm
I have a question about the length of the Mercury Solar Day. I homeschool my children and we have been studying Mercury for the last 4 weeks. Every book we checked out from the library and even our astronomy textbook taught us that a day on Mercury was 59 earth days and a year was 88 earth days. Yet, the APOD article about Mercury today and its references all say 176 earth days. Have astronomers changed the number in recent years? The books we checked out and our Astronomy text was published in 2004 and all the other books were all published in the late 90's and early 2000's.
Thanks for helping us understand this.
Tish
Thanks for helping us understand this.
Tish