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The term satellite thus became the normal one for referring to an object orbiting a planet, as it avoided the ambiguity of "moon". In 1957, however, the launching of the artificial object Sputnik created a need for new terminology. [5] The terms man-made satellite and artificial moon were very quickly abandoned in favor of the simpler satellite ...
The English proper name for Earth's natural satellite is typically written as Moon, with a capital M. [19] [20] The noun moon is derived from Old English mōna, which stems from Proto-Germanic *mēnōn, [21] which in turn comes from Proto-Indo-European *mēnsis 'month' [22] (from earlier *mēnōt, genitive *mēneses) which may be related to the verb 'measure' (of time).
The Roman numbering system for satellites arose with the very first discovery of natural satellites other than Earth's Moon: Galileo referred to the Galilean moons as I through IV (counting from Jupiter outward), refusing to adopt the names proposed by his rival Simon Marius. Similar numbering schemes naturally arose with the discovery of ...
The moon does not form part of the orbital resonance that affects three inner Galilean satellites and thus does not experience appreciable tidal heating. [47] Callisto is composed of approximately equal amounts of rock and ices , which makes it the least dense of the Galilean moons.
Irregular moons are probably minor planets that have been captured from surrounding space. Most irregular moons are less than 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) in diameter. The earliest published discovery of a moon other than Earth's was by Galileo Galilei, who discovered the four Galilean moons orbiting Jupiter in 1610. Over the following three ...
Twenty-four of the known moons are regular satellites; they have prograde orbits not greatly inclined to Saturn's equatorial plane, [8] with the exception of Iapetus which has a prograde but highly inclined orbit, [9] [10] an unusual characteristic for a regular moon. They include the seven major satellites, four small moons that exist in a ...
Why is it called the flower moon? Previous reporting by the Hendersonville Times-News said that the 12 full moons each year are named by Native American tradition. In the same article UNC ...
This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 23 February 2025. Objects intentionally placed into orbit This article is about human-made satellites. For moons, see Natural satellite. For other uses, see Satellite (disambiguation). Two CubeSats orbiting around Earth after being deployed from the ISS Kibō module's Small Satellite Orbital Deployer A ...