Another one of my questions! If a body is tidally locked to the sun, one face will always face the sun while the other is in total darkness. Unlike our moon, which is perfectly synchronous with Earth, Mercury has a 3:2 spin-orbit resonance with the sun, which means it spins three times for every two orbits. Does this mean that any given point on mercury's surface will still have some share of night and day, one point rotating very slowly away from the sun? If this is the case, how does one calculate these times? thx

Dar



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/18/2005 02:59PM by darkuser.