Mercury (planet) three weeks, the Sun is almost stationary overhead, and is at its most brilliant because Mercury is at perihelion, its closest to the Sun. This prolonged exposure to the Sun at its brightest makes these two points the hottest places on Mercury. Conversely, there are two other points on the equator, 90 degrees of longitude apart from the first ones, where the Sun passes overhead only when the planet is at aphelion in alternate years, when the apparent motion of the Sun in Mercury's sky is relatively rapid. These points, which are the ones on the equator where the apparent
Double planet the "New Horizons" space probe in June 2015. Under this definition, the Earth–Moon system is not currently a double planet; although the Moon is massive enough to cause the Earth to make a noticeable revolution around this center of mass, this point nevertheless lies well within Earth. However, the Moon migrates outward from Earth at a rate of approximately per year; in a few hundred million years, the Earth–Moon system's center of mass will lie outside Earth, which would make it a double-planet system. The center of mass of the Jupiter–Sun system lies outside the surface of the Sun, though