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
Planet Nine distant orbits around another star, or rogue planet, leaving one in a stable orbit around the Sun via a process similar to the capture of irregular satellites around the giant planets. If the planet originated in a system with a number of Neptune-massed planets, and without Jupiter-massed planets, it could be scattered into a more long-lasting distant eccentric orbit, increasing its chances of capture. Although the odds of the Sun capturing another planet from another star can be higher, a wider variety of orbits are possible, reducing the probability of a planet being captured on an orbit like that proposed