Planet Mercury has the longest day in the solar system. Each hemisphere will bake under the boiling sunlight for 88 Earth days before the other hemisphere swings around from 88 pitch black nights to have its turn at the searing heat coming from merely 57.9 million kilometers, which is spitting distance in the solar system.
Even more difficult to image than Venus due to its size, nonetheless Solar System Today was able to catch it both fully illuminated as well as phased, proving once more that the inner planets can be seen fully illuminated.
MEADE 14” LX200, SBIG ST2K. Exposure time: 0.1 seconds in high resolution.
Image development in CCDops, Maxim DL4 and Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended