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Alan Stern calls these satellite planets, although the term major moon is more common. The smallest natural satellite that is gravitationally rounded is Saturn I Mimas (radius 198.2 ± 0.4 km). This is smaller than the largest natural satellite that is known not to be gravitationally rounded, Neptune VIII Proteus (radius 210 ± 7 km).
These lists contain the Sun, the planets, dwarf planets, many of the larger small Solar System bodies (which includes the asteroids), all named natural satellites, and a number of smaller objects of historical or scientific interest, such as comets and near-Earth objects.
The square of a planet's orbital period is proportional to the cube of the length of the semi-major axis of its orbit. The elliptical orbits of planets were indicated by calculations of the orbit of Mars. From this, Kepler inferred that other bodies in the Solar System, including those farther away from the Sun, also have elliptical orbits. The ...
The orbital period (also revolution period) is the amount of time a given astronomical object takes to complete one orbit around another object. In astronomy, it usually applies to planets or asteroids orbiting the Sun, moons orbiting planets, exoplanets orbiting other stars, or binary stars.
In the patched conic approximation, once an object leaves the planet's SOI, the primary/only gravitational influence is the Sun (until the object enters another body's SOI). Because the definition of r SOI relies on the presence of the Sun and a planet, the term is only applicable in a three-body or greater system and requires the mass of the ...
In gravitationally bound systems, the orbital speed of an astronomical body or object (e.g. planet, moon, artificial satellite, spacecraft, or star) is the speed at which it orbits around either the barycenter (the combined center of mass) or, if one body is much more massive than the other bodies of the system combined, its speed relative to the center of mass of the most massive body.
Neptune has 16 known moons; the largest, Triton, accounts for more than 99.5 percent of all the mass orbiting the planet. Triton is large enough to have achieved hydrostatic equilibrium, but, uniquely for a large moon, has a retrograde orbit, suggesting it was a dwarf planet that was captured.
An animation showing a low eccentricity orbit (near-circle, in red), and a high eccentricity orbit (ellipse, in purple). In celestial mechanics, an orbit (also known as orbital revolution) is the curved trajectory of an object [1] such as the trajectory of a planet around a star, or of a natural satellite around a planet, or of an artificial satellite around an object or position in space such ...