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Some moons, minor planets and comets of the Solar System to scale (major planets not to scale) Selected moons, with Earth to scale. Nineteen moons are large enough to be round, and two, Titan and Triton, have substantial atmospheres The number of moons discovered in each year until November 2019. Mercury, the smallest and innermost planet, has ...
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 Moon is Earth's only natural satellite.It orbits at an average distance of 384,400 km (238,900 mi), about 30 times the diameter of Earth. Tidal forces between Earth and the Moon have synchronized the Moon's orbital period (lunar month) with its rotation period at 29.5 Earth days, causing the same side of the Moon to always face Earth.
The first full moon of 2024 will rise on Jan. 25 at 12:54 p.m. EST. Traditionally known as the Wolf Moon because of a greater chance of hearing wolves howling during that time, according to the ...
Triton is unique among all large moons in the Solar System for its retrograde orbit around its planet (i.e. it orbits in a direction opposite to the planet's rotation). Most of the outer irregular moons of Jupiter and Saturn also have retrograde orbits, as do some of the irregular moons of Uranus and Neptune.
NASA's Galileo ' s measurements suggest that large moons can have magnetic fields; it found Ganymede has its own magnetosphere, even though its mass is only 2.5% of Earth's. [18] Alternatively, the moon's atmosphere may be constantly replenished by gases from subsurface sources, as thought by some scientists to be the case with Titan. [21]
Kepler-138 is a red dwarf with approximately 54% the mass of and 54% the radius of the Sun. [5] It has a surface temperature of 3726 +44 −40 K. [6] In comparison, the Sun has a surface temperature of 5778 K. [22] Kepler-138's apparent magnitude (how bright it appears from Earth's perspective) is 13.04, [2] too dim to be seen with the naked eye.
It is the rounded moon that has the smallest orbit around a major planet. Its orbital period is 34 hours and, like that of the Moon, is synchronous with its rotation period, which means it always shows the same face to Uranus, a condition known as tidal locking.