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The known icy moons in this range are all ellipsoidal (except Proteus), but trans-Neptunian objects up to 450–500 km radius may be quite porous. [10] For simplicity and comparative purposes, the values are manually calculated assuming that the bodies are all spheres. The size of solid bodies does not include an object's atmosphere.
These moons all orbit beyond the E Ring. They are: Rhea is the second-largest of Saturn's moons. It is even slightly larger than Oberon, the second-largest moon of Uranus. [53] In 2005, Cassini detected a depletion of electrons in the plasma wake of Rhea, which forms when the co-rotating plasma of Saturn's magnetosphere is absorbed by the moon ...
Pluto's four other moons, Nix, Hydra, Kerberos and Styx are far smaller and orbit the Pluto–Charon system. [5] Among the other dwarf planets, Ceres has no known moons. It is 90 percent certain that Ceres has no moons larger than 1 km in size, assuming that they would have the same albedo as Ceres itself. [6] Eris has one large known moon ...
The moons of the trans-Neptunian objects (other than Charon) have not been included, because they appear to follow the normal situation for TNOs rather than the moons of Saturn and Uranus, and become solid at a larger size (900–1000 km diameter, rather than 400 km as for the moons of Saturn and Uranus).
A montage of Jupiter and its four largest moons (distance and sizes not to scale) There are 95 moons of Jupiter with confirmed orbits as of 5 February 2024. [1] [note 1] This number does not include a number of meter-sized moonlets thought to be shed from the inner moons, nor hundreds of possible kilometer-sized outer irregular moons that were only briefly captured by telescopes. [4]
[12] [22] All of the inner moons are intimately connected with the rings of Uranus, which probably resulted from the fragmentation of one or several small inner moons. [23] The two innermost moons, Cordelia and Ophelia, are shepherds of Uranus's ε ring, whereas the small moon Mab is a source of Uranus's outermost μ ring. [12]
There are 293 confirmed moons in our cosmic neighborhood. By studying these worlds, astronomers hope to learn about ancient asteroid collisions, space volcanoes, and the origins of life itself.
In order of distance from Neptune, the regular moons are Naiad, Thalassa, Despina, Galatea, Larissa, Hippocamp, and Proteus. All but the outer two are within Neptune-synchronous orbit (Neptune's rotational period is 0.6713 day or 16 hours [20]) and thus are being tidally decelerated. Naiad, the closest regular moon, is also the second smallest ...