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The outer Solar System with the giant planets, their satellites, trojan asteroids and some minor planets. Jupiter. Rings of Jupiter; Complete list of Jupiter's natural satellites. Galilean moons. Io; Europa; Ganymede; Callisto; Jupiter trojans; Jupiter-crossing minor planets; Saturn. Rings of Saturn; Complete list of Saturn's natural satellites ...
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).
Careful observations of the 1769 transit of Venus allowed astronomers to calculate the average Earth–Sun distance as 93,726,900 miles (150,838,800 km), only 0.8% greater than the modern value. [291] Uranus, having occasionally been observed since 1690 and possibly from antiquity, was recognized to be a planet orbiting beyond Saturn by 1783. [292]
Saturn is named after the Roman god of wealth and agriculture, who was the father of the god Jupiter.Its astronomical symbol has been traced back to the Greek Oxyrhynchus Papyri, where it can be seen to be a Greek kappa-rho ligature with a horizontal stroke, as an abbreviation for Κρονος (), the Greek name for the planet (). [35]
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.
The poles of astronomical bodies are determined based on their axis of rotation in relation to the celestial poles of the celestial sphere. Astronomical bodies include stars, planets, dwarf planets and small Solar System bodies such as comets and minor planets (e.g., asteroids), as well as natural satellites and minor-planet moons.
On November 4, 2013, astronomers reported, based on Kepler space mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of Sun-like stars and red dwarf stars within the Milky Way galaxy. [7] [8] Eleven billion of these estimated planets may be orbiting Sun-like stars. [9]
The Sun, planets, moons and dwarf planets (true color, size to scale, distances not to scale) The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the Solar System: Solar System – gravitationally bound system comprising the Sun and the objects that orbit it, either directly or indirectly.