- The Moons of Mars, the Red Planet.
Mars has two small Moons , Phobos and Deimos, both discovered in 1877
by Asaph Hall.
Phobos is the largest and orbits just
6,000km above the surface of Mars, the closest orbit of any moon to its
home world. Phobos is slowly creeping toward Mars @ a rate of 1.8 meters
every 100 years and will eventually crash into it.
Phobus was named after a messenger of the Roman god of war.
Deimos is the smallest moon in the solar
system, measuring just 15x12x11km in size and orbits Mars every 30 hours,
it is named after the Roman god of dread. Both moons are irregular in
shape and heavily cratered.
Galileo Galilei discovered four moons orbiting Jupiter in 1610 The
moons are Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto collectively known as the
Galilean satellites.
Io similar in size to the Earth's moon,
orbiting 422,000 miles from Jupiter is the most volcanically active
body in the Solar System, spewing sulphurous gases and other material
100's of kilometers above its surface. Io is subject to immense tidal
forces caused by Jupiter pulling it in one direction and sister moons
Europa and Ganymede pulling it in the other, this causes the surface
to bulge in and out as much as 100 meters, the pressure is then released
by its volcanoes.
Europa a strange-looking moon with
virtually no craters and a very flat surface, orbiting about 670,000
miles from Jupiter. Scientists believe that below its thin cracked surface
is a deep liquid ocean, which might have allowed life to arise.
Ganymede with a diameter of 5262 km
is so large that if it orbited the Sun instead of Jupiter it would be
called a planet. It orbits 1.07 million kilometers from Jupiter and
has surface features, including mountains, valleys, craters and lava
channels.
Callisto orbits about 1.88 million
kilometers from Jupiter and is the third largest moon in the solar system,
it is also the most cratered moon, with its crust dating back 4 billion
years. Callisto is a half-ice, half-rock moon with a thin carbon dioxide
atmosphere.
Other moons were found orbiting Jupiter by the two Voyager spacecrafts
in 1979 and 1980, these are: Metis,
Adrastea, Amalthea
and Thebe. Recent improvement in
detection techniques have now brought the total number of Jovian moons
to 28.
There are at least 24 and possibly as many as 30 moons orbiting Saturn.
Pan, Atlas,
Prometheus and Pandora
are four small shepherd moons that help Saturn maintain its elaborate
ring system.
Titan is the largest at 5,150 km in
diameter, the second largest moon in the solar system and also one of
the most interesting. The moon orbits 1.22 million km from Saturn with
an atmosphere made up of mainly nitrogen and other hydrocarbons - the
key elements for amino acid proteins, the building blocks of life. Scientists
believe Titan may resemble a primordial Earth and the European Space
Agency is planing to send the Huygens probe, part of the Cassini mission
to Saturn, to penetrate its atmosphere in January 2005.
Mimas has a crater about one-third
the size of the moon itself. The crater is 10 km deep, 130 km wide and
with peaks rising 6 km above the crater floor. The impact would have
came close to destroying the moon.
Enceladus, Saturn's eighth moon orbits
238,000 km above the planets surface, it is a bright moon with a smooth
surface and no large craters.
Tethys, discovered in 1684 by Giovanni
Cassini, is a large moon 295,000 km from Saturn. Tethys is accompanied
by two Trojan moons Telesto and
Calypso, they orbit 60 degrees in front
and 60 degrees behind Tethys respectively. Tethys is made up of mainly
ice with its surface cratered and cracked, one trench is 65 km wide
and covers three-fourths of its surface.
Dione was also discovered by Cassini
in 1684, it orbits 377,400 km above Saturn and has one small Trojan
moon called Helene, which flies
60 degrees ahead of Dione. Scientists believe that Dione may have been
turned around - perhaps many times - by large impacts and this is how
its heavily cratered surface came to be turned away from Saturn, rather
than towards it, as some cratering models predict. Its surface has several
craters larger than 35 km, the size scientists believe it would take
to spin the moon around.
Uranus has 21 moons 18 of them have names
Cordelia and Ophelia,
the two innermost moons shepherd the planets thin Epsilon ring, they orbit
49,770 km and 53,790 km above their home world.
Biance, Cressida,
Desdemona, Juliet,
Portia, Rosalind,
Belinda and Puck
make up the other small inner moons. They were all discovered by Voyager
2 during its 1986 flyby, scientists know very little about these very
dark satellites.
Miranda is a very odd looking small
moon, orbiting @ 129,000 km and is 470 km in diameter, it appears to have
been shattered and reformed up to 5 times in its past. Its surface is
a jumbled mixture of features with 20 km deep canyons scaring its face.
Titania orbits Uranus @ 436,000 km
and is the largest satellite @ 1,578 km in diameter.
Ariel orbits Uranus @ 191,000
km, is the brightest moon of Uranus and is 1,183 km in diameter.
Umbriel is a very dark moon and orbits
Uranus @ 265,980 km.
Oberon, the 2nd largest moon of Uranus
and orbits @ 583,420 km.
Neptune has 8 moons, its innermost satellite Naiad
is 54 km in dia. and orbits 23,200 km above it. Naiad circles close
to Neptune's equator and completes one orbit every 7 hours 6 minutes.
Thalassa is 50 km in dia and orbits
25,200 km above Neptune.
Despina is 150 km in dia. and orbits
27,700 km above Neptune.
Galatea is 180 km in dia. and orbits
37,200 km above Neptune.
Larissa is 190 km in dia. and orbits
48,800 km above Neptune.
Proteus is 400 km in dia. and orbits
92,800 km above Neptune.
Triton is the largest of Neptune's
moons, discovered in 1846 by William Lassell less than one month after
the planet was discovered. It orbits 354,700 km from its home planet
and measures 2,700 km in diameter. Triton is the only moon in the solar
system to have a retrograde (in the opposite direction of Neptune's
rotation) orbit, it is also the coldest known body with temperatures
as low as minus 235 degrees Celsius, making its mainly nitrogen atmosphere
condense into frost. Triton is gradually getting closer to Neptune and
will eventually, in the next 10 to 100 million years, collide with it.
Nereid was discovered in 1949 by
Gerard Kuiper, it has the distinction of the moon with the most eccentric
orbit, its distance from Neptune varies from about 1.35 million km to
more than 9.62 million km. It takes Nereid 360 days to complete just
one orbit of Neptune.
Charon is the only known moon of
Pluto and is about half the size of its mother planet. The pair are
sometimes refereed to as the double planet because of their size comparison,
compared to other moons and planets. Due to their comparative size they
exert about the same gravitational hold on each other as they fly through
space and are the only planet-moon duo in the solar system that keep
the same face towards each other.
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