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Although the Moon is Earth's only natural satellite, there are a number of near-Earth objects (NEOs) with orbits that are in resonance with Earth. These have been called "second" moons of Earth or "minimoons". [2] [3] 469219 Kamoʻoalewa, an asteroid discovered on 27 April 2016, is possibly the most stable quasi-satellite of Earth. [4]
The ring was first formally proposed after 21 impact craters from the meteor event were found to be located along a straight band around the Earth's equator. [10] [11] Andrew G. Tomkins, [9] Erin L. Martin [9] and Peter A. Cawood, [9] working with Monash University, released a study in September 2024 that gave evidence on the existence of the ...
An artist's impression of Rhea's rings. The density of the particles is exaggerated greatly to aid visibility. [1] Rhea, the second-largest moon of Saturn, may have a tenuous ring system consisting of three narrow, relatively dense bands within a particulate disk. This would be the first discovery of rings around a moon.
Among the other dwarf planets, Ceres has no known moons. It is 90 percent certain that Ceres has no moons larger than 1 km in size, assuming that they would have the same albedo as Ceres itself. [6] Eris has one large known moon, Dysnomia. Accurately determining its size is difficult: one indicative estimate of its radius is 350 ± 57.5 km. [7]
Earth may have had a ring made up of a broken asteroid over 400 million years ago, a study finds. The Saturn-like feature could explain a climate shift at the time.
The known icy moons in this range are all ellipsoidal (except Proteus), but trans-Neptunian objects up to 450–500 km radius may be quite porous. [10] For simplicity and comparative purposes, the values are manually calculated assuming that the bodies are all spheres. The size of solid bodies does not include an object's atmosphere.
Some planetary rings are influenced by shepherd moons, small moons that orbit near the inner or outer edges of a ringlet or within gaps in the rings. The gravity of shepherd moons serves to maintain a sharply defined edge to the ring; material that drifts closer to the shepherd moon's orbit is either deflected back into the body of the ring ...
A belt of objects embedded in a planetary ring, especially around Saturn, such as those in the A Ring, S/2009 S 1 in the B Ring ("propeller" moonlets), [2] [3] and those in the F Ring [4] Occasionally asteroid moons, such as those of 87 Sylvia [5] Flashes seen near Jupiter's moon Amalthea that is likely debris ejected from its surface [6 ...