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The adjectival forms of the names of astronomical bodies are not always easily predictable. Attested adjectival forms of the larger bodies are listed below, along with the two small Martian moons; in some cases they are accompanied by their demonymic equivalents, which denote hypothetical inhabitants of these bodies.
Consequently, Venus transits above Earth only occur when an inferior conjunction takes place during some days of June or December, the time where the orbits of Venus and Earth cross a straight line with the Sun. [185] This results in Venus transiting above Earth in a sequence of currently 8 years, 105.5 years, 8 years and 121.5 years, forming ...
Exceptions to this rule are valleys and craters on Mars and Venus; naming conventions for these features differ according to size. One feature classification, regio, was originally used on early maps of the Moon and Mercury (drawn from telescopic observations) to describe vague albedo features. It is now used to delineate a broad geographic region.
Earth, when viewed as a planet, is sometimes also called by its Latin scientific conventional name Terra, this name is especially prevalent in science fiction where the adjective "terran" is also used in the way which "Lunar" or "Jovian" is for Earth's moon or Jupiter. The Latin convention derives from the use of that language as an ...
However, the increasing number of moons that were being discovered in the 21st century caused the IAU to draw up a new scheme for the outer moons. At the IAU General Assembly in July 2004, [ 2 ] the WGPSN allowed satellites of Saturn to have names of giants and monsters in mythologies other than the Greco-Roman.
Its mass is 1.2% that of the Earth, and its diameter is 3,474 km (2,159 mi), roughly one-quarter of Earth's (about as wide as the United States from coast to coast). Within the Solar System , it is the largest and most massive satellite in relation to its parent planet , the fifth largest and most massive moon overall, and larger and more ...
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 no moons, or at least none that can be detected to a diameter of 1.6 km (1.0 mi). [2] For a very short time in 1974, Mercury was ...
Representation of Venus (yellow) and Earth (blue) circling around the Sun. Venus and its rotation in respect to its revolution. Venus has an orbit with a semi-major axis of 0.723 au (108,200,000 km; 67,200,000 mi), and an eccentricity of 0.007.