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 and proposed a possible orbit for the planet. This hypothesis could also explain TNOs with orbits perpendicular to the inner planets and others with extreme inclinations, as well as the tilt of the Sun's axis. Planet Nine is hypothesized to follow a highly elliptical orbit around the Sun with a period lasting 10,000–20,000 years. The planet's semi-major axis is estimated to be , roughly 20 times the distance from Neptune to the Sun, and its inclination to the ecliptic, the plane of the Solar System, to be about . The high eccentricity of Planet Nine's orbit could bring it as