*"I had no idea Mercury was so fascinating!" said one smiling guest after the lecture in Trinity College <http://www.astronomy.ie/lectureDVD.php> last Monday night. "I saw it in the sky and it was great to get so much excellent information about it!"* Did you know that there is a huge and mysterious geological 'spider' on Mercury? Or did you know that Mercury may have had its own moon in the past? Or what about how the planet has a very strange orbit, that could only be explained by Einstein's Theory of Relativity? Mercury is a lifeless planet, very close to our parent star. In the daytime, temperatures can reach almost 430 degrees C, where at night it drops to a chilling 180 degrees C below zero! The planet is a very dense and heavy lump of rock and metal, and its thousands of craters tell us that there have been no volcanic eruptions or lava flows on Mercury for billions of years. But on Monday, April 12, Dr David Rothery of the Open University in the UK explained how Mercury isn't the boring and dead planet astronomers once thought it was. Observations and studies in recent years have revealed all kinds of new and exciting details about the planet, both on and underneath the surface. Indeed, NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft is due to enter orbit around Mercury next year, and BepiColombo - a joint project between Europe and Japan - will reach Mercury in 2020. *Order your Mercury DVD now!* <http://www.astronomy.ie/lectureDVD.php> If you didn't get to go to the lecture, don't get left out! Order a DVD<http://www.astronomy.ie/lectureDVD.php>of Dr Rothery's excellent lecture now, or why not get one for a friend and share your excitement of astronomy? *Astronomy Ireland <http://www.astronomy.ie/>* *The world's most popular Astronomy Club www.astronomy.ie* ** *( subscribe / unsubscribe<http://lists.redbrick.dcu.ie/mailman/listinfo/astronomy> )* ** *Our Online Telescope Shop <http://www.astronomy.ie/shop.html>* * * * *