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The timeline of discovery of Solar System planets and their natural satellites charts the progress of the discovery of new bodies over history. Each object is listed in chronological order of its discovery (multiple dates occur when the moments of imaging, observation, and publication differ), identified through its various designations (including temporary and permanent schemes), and the ...
The largest of these may have a hydrostatic-equilibrium shape, but most are irregular. Most of the trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) listed with a radius smaller than 200 km have " assumed sizes based on a generic albedo of 0.09" since they are too far away to directly measure their sizes with existing instruments.
The retrograde moons are grouped into the Carme, Ananke and Pasiphae groups. Saturn has 146 moons with known orbits; 66 of them have received permanent designations, and 63 have been named. Most of them are quite small. Seven moons are large enough to be in hydrostatic equilibrium, including Titan, the second
Pluto likely acquired large moon Charon in a “kiss and capture” collision billions of years ago. It may have created a subsurface ocean on the icy dwarf planet.
The Galilean moons are named after Galileo Galilei, who observed them in either December 1609 or January 1610, and recognized them as satellites of Jupiter in March 1610; [2] they remained the only known moons of Jupiter until the discovery of the fifth largest moon of Jupiter Amalthea in 1892. [3]
With a diameter of about 5,270 kilometres (3,270 mi) and a mass of 1.48 × 10 20 tonnes (1.48 × 10 23 kg; 3.26 × 10 23 lb), Ganymede is the largest and most massive moon in the Solar System. [45] It is slightly more massive than the second most massive moon, Saturn's satellite Titan , and is more than twice as massive as the Earth's Moon.
The four largest moons of Jupiter all orbit within the magnetosphere, which protects them from solar wind. [70]: 69 The volcanoes on the moon Io emit large amounts of sulfur dioxide, forming a gas torus along its orbit. The gas is ionized in Jupiter's magnetosphere, producing sulfur and oxygen ions.
Titan is the largest moon of Saturn and the second-largest in the Solar System.It is the only moon known to have an atmosphere denser than the Earth's and is the only known object in space—other than Earth—on which there is clear evidence that stable bodies of liquid exist.