Mercury (planet) Mercury (planet) Mercury is the smallest and innermost planet in the Solar System. Its orbital period around the Sun of 87.97 days is the shortest of all the planets in the Solar System. It is named after the Roman deity Mercury, the messenger of the gods. Like Venus, Mercury orbits the Sun within Earth's orbit as an "inferior planet", and never exceeds 28° away from the Sun. When viewed from Earth, this proximity to the Sun means the planet can only be seen near the western or eastern horizon during the early evening or early morning. At this time it
Closest point method surrounding the surface for efficient computational purposes. formula_13 where formula_14 is the bandwidth. Using initial profile formula_15 leads to the solution formula_16 for the heat equation. Forward Euler time-stepping is used with relation formula_17 and degree-four interpolation polynomials for the interpolations. Second-order centered differences are used for the spatial discretization. The CPM results in the expected second order error in the solution formula_18. The closest point method can be applied to various PDEs on surfaces. Reaction–diffusion problems on point clouds [RD], eigenvalue problems [EV], and level set equations [LS] are a few examples. Closest point method The closest point method