> But when Mercury is moving fastest in its elliptical orbit around the Sun (and it is closest to the Sun), each rotation is not accompanied by sunrise and sunset like it is on most other planets. The morning Sun appears to rise briefly, set, and rise again from some parts of the planet's surface.
On Earth, the synodic day is 24 hours long, and the sidereal day is about 4 minutes shorter. In the case of Mercury, the sidereal day is 59 Earth days and the synodic day is 176 Earth days. Note that the synodic day is the one we on Earth use to define the length of a day for timekeeping purposes--it's a lot easier to measure synodic time than sidereal time.