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
Five-planet Nice model in 2011 after numerical models indicated that this is more likely to reproduce the current Solar System. The following is a version of the five-planet Nice model that results in a late instability and reproduces a number of aspects of the current Solar System. The early Solar System may have evolved differently, however, with the instability occurring soon after the dissipation of the gas nebula, or with the giant planets beginning in another resonance chain. The Solar System ends its nebula phase with Jupiter, Saturn, and the three ice giants in a 3:2, 3:2, 2:1, 3:2 resonance chain with semi-major