Mercury (planet) diagram on the right illustrates the effects of the eccentricity, showing Mercury's orbit overlaid with a circular orbit having the same semi-major axis. Mercury's higher velocity when it is near perihelion is clear from the greater distance it covers in each 5-day interval. In the diagram the varying distance of Mercury to the Sun is represented by the size of the planet, which is inversely proportional to Mercury's distance from the Sun. This varying distance to the Sun leads to Mercury's surface being flexed by tidal bulges raised by the Sun that are about 17 times stronger than the Moon's
The empire on which the sun never sets expression, the sun never sets in the Spanish dominions, but ever shines upon one part or other of them : which, to say truly, is a beam of glory [...]". Thomas Urquhart wrote of "that great Don Philippe, Tetrarch of the world, upon whose subjects the sun never sets." In the German dramatist Friedrich Schiller's 1787 play, "Don Carlos", Don Carlos's father, Philip II, says, "" ("I am called / The richest monarch in the Christian world; / The sun in my dominion never sets."). Joseph Fouché recalled Napoleon saying before the Peninsular War, "Reflect that the sun never sets