The first four moons listed, the Galilean moons, are visible in binoculars. Jupiter may have moons total, but most of these are very small. Moons of Saturn are listed in order of size. The first seven moons are viewable using a telescope, and the largest moon Titan, is visible through good binoculars.
Saturn also has hundreds to thousands of moonlets embedded in its ring system. Moons of Uranus are listed in order of size. The first four are visible in medium to large inch telescopes. Moons of Neptune are listed in order of size.
Triton is visible using a medium to large inch telescope. Triton is believed to be a dwarf planet from the Kuiper Belt captured by Neptune. Moons of Pluto are listed in order of size. Pluto and Charon are considered a binary dwarf planet system.
Sarah Appleton, National Geographic Society. For information on user permissions, please read our Terms of Service. If you have questions about how to cite anything on our website in your project or classroom presentation, please contact your teacher. They will best know the preferred format. When you reach out to them, you will need the page title, URL, and the date you accessed the resource. If a media asset is downloadable, a download button appears in the corner of the media viewer.
If no button appears, you cannot download or save the media. Text on this page is printable and can be used according to our Terms of Service. Any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. You cannot download interactives.
There are hundreds of moons in our solar system — even a few asteroids have been found to have small companion moons. Moons that begin with a letter and a year are considered provisional moons.
They will be given a proper name when their discoveries are confirmed by additional observations. Of the terrestrial rocky planets of the inner solar system, neither Mercury nor Venus have any moons at all, Earth has one and Mars has its two small moons.
In the outer solar system, the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn and the ice giants Uranus and Neptune have dozens of moons.
As these planets grew in the early solar system, they were able to capture smaller objects with their large gravitational fields. Most moons in our solar system are named for mythological characters from a wide variety of cultures. The newest moons discovered at Saturn, for example, are named for Norse gods such as Bergelmir , a giant.
Uranus is the exception. The International Astronomical Union approves an official name when the discovery is confirmed. Earth's Moon probably formed when a large body about the size of Mars collided with Earth, ejecting a lot of material from our planet into orbit. Debris from the early Earth and the impacting body accumulated to form the Moon approximately 4. Usually the term moon brings to mind a spherical object, like Earth's Moon.
The two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos , are different. While both have nearly circular orbits and travel close to the plane of the planet's equator, they are lumpy and dark. Phobos is slowly drawing closer to Mars and could crash into the planet in 40 or 50 million years. Or the planet's gravity might break Phobos apart, creating a thin ring around Mars.
Jupiter's menagerie of moons includes the largest in the solar system Ganymede , an ocean moon Europa and a volcanic moon Io. Many of Jupiter's outer moons have highly elliptical orbits and orbit backwards opposite to the spin of the planet. Saturn, Uranus and Neptune also have some irregular moons, which orbit far from their respective planets.
0コメント