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From left to right: Earth, Mars, Venus and Mercury. The Solar System has four terrestrial planets under the dynamical definition: Mercury , Venus , Earth and Mars . The Earth's Moon as well as Jupiter's moons Io and Europa would also count geophysically, as well as perhaps the large protoplanet-asteroids Pallas and Vesta (though those are ...
The outer planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, compared to the inner planets Earth, Venus, Mars, and Mercury at the bottom right The four outer planets, called giant planets or Jovian planets, collectively make up 99% of the mass orbiting the Sun. [ h ] All four giant planets have multiple moons and a ring system, although only Saturn's ...
The scientific names are taken from the names given by the Romans: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Our own planet is usually named in English as Earth , or the equivalent in the language being spoken (for instance, two astronomers speaking French would call it la Terre ).
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 ...
[1] Since the invention of the telescope, astronomers have given names to the surface features they have discerned, especially on the Moon and Mars. To found an authority on planetary nomenclature, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) was organized in 1919 to designate and standardize names for features on Solar System bodies. [2]
The written symbols for Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and possibly Mars have been traced to forms found in late Greek papyrus texts. [254] The symbols for Jupiter and Saturn are identified as monograms of the corresponding Greek names, and the symbol for Mercury is a stylized caduceus. [254]
The inner protoplanets were Venus-Mercury and Earth-Mars. The moons of the greater planets were formed from "droplets" in the neck connecting the two portions of the dividing protoplanet. These droplets could account for some asteroids. Terrestrial planets would have no major moons, which does not account for the Moon. The hypothesis also ...
The naming of moons has been the responsibility of the International Astronomical Union's committee for Planetary System Nomenclature since 1973. That committee is known today as the Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature (WGPSN). Prior to its formation, the names of satellites have had varying histories.