10 Things You Didn't Know About Mercury's Interaction with the Sun

Mercury's orbit is anything but circular. It's highly elliptical, with a significant eccentricity of 0.21. This means that at its closest point, called perihelion, it's a mere 46 million kilometers away from the Sun, while at aphelion, it's a staggering 70 million kilometers distant. Such a dynamic orbit leads to extreme temperature variations on the planet's surface.