Abstract
OBSERVATIONS of the radio emission from the planet Mercury made at the University of Michigan in 1960 and 1961 near greatest elongation gave a value of about 400° K for the mean disk temperature measured at wave-lengths near 3 cm (ref. 1). Assuming that the side of Mercury perpetually facing away from the Sun has a surface temperature of zero, the Michigan workers concluded that the sub-solar point must be approximately 1,100° K, or greater than the 600°–700° K that is expected from solar radiation. It was realized, however, that the temperature of the sub-solar point deduced in this way depends critically on the temperature of the dark hemisphere, which although not previously measured has been generally assumed to be close to zero.
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KELLERMANN, K. 11-cm Observations of the Temperature of Mercury. Nature 205, 1091–1092 (1965). https://doi.org/10.1038/2051091a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/2051091a0
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