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Planet Nine is a hypothetical ninth planet in the outer region of the Solar System. [4] [2] Its gravitational effects could explain the peculiar clustering of orbits for a group of extreme trans-Neptunian objects (ETNOs), bodies beyond Neptune that orbit the Sun at distances averaging more than 250 times that of the Earth i.e. over 250 astronomical units (AU).
Unlike most planetary moons, which are named from antiquity, all the moons of Uranus are named after characters from the works of Shakespeare and Alexander Pope's work The Rape of the Lock. 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 ...
More recently, especially in science-fiction content, the Moon has been called by the Latin name Luna, presumably on the analogy of the Latin names of the planets, or by association with the adjectival form lunar, or a need to differentiate it from other moons that may be present in a fictional setting.
For instance, for a large portion of names ending in -s, the oblique stem and therefore the English adjective changes the -s to a -d, -t, or -r, as in Mars–Martian, Pallas–Palladian and Ceres–Cererian; [note 1] occasionally an -n has been lost historically from the nominative form, and reappears in the oblique and therefore in the English ...
To an observer on the surface of Venus, the Sun would rise in the west and set in the east, [155] although Venus's opaque clouds prevent observing the Sun from the planet's surface. [156] Venus may have formed from the solar nebula with a different rotation period and obliquity, reaching its current state because of chaotic spin changes caused ...
The number of known planets in our solar system has risen and fallen over time. Planet nine may be orbiting far from the Sun, at the edge of our solar system. Astronomers, seeing odd ...
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 1884, Jean-Charles Houzeau, the former director of the Royal Observatory of Brussels suggested that the "moon" was actually a planet which orbited the Sun every 283 days. Such a planet would be in conjunction with Venus every 1080 days, which fit with the recorded observations. Houzeau was also the first to give the object the name Neith ...