Mercury’s mean solar distance is roughly 0.39 AU — well inside Earth’s orbit — so sunlight there is several times more intense than at our blue world.
That closeness also shortens the year to about eighty-eight Earth days and bats the planet with a fierce solar wind. Radar and spacecraft maps still find ice in forever-shadowed polar craters despite the scorching dayside.
Inner AU numbers explain extremes. Mercury proves living close to the Sun is a radiation and heat bargain that no other planet in our system accepts.
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