Like all other moons on this list, our Moon is tidally locked to its parent planet, with the same side always facingour world. This makes Ganymede even larger than the planet Mercury, which has a diameter of 3,032 miles (4,879 kilometers). The heat from tidal flexing, induced from Jupiters gravitational pull, is thought to cause the subsurface ocean to remain liquid, driving the ice to move in a fashion similar to plate tectonics. The exterior was covered in rivers, streams, lakes, and seas. 5.) If the idea that there is a large object some ~200 AU away, provisionally called either Planet Nine or Planet X turns out to be correct, it may knock everything on this list down a peg, or may even be classified as a planet itself. Orbiting close in at a mean distance of only 355,000 km, both rings and moons are nowhere to be found around Neptune until you reach a distance more than 15 times as great. The discovery, along with his discovery of three other large moons around Jupiter, was the first time a moon was discovered orbiting a planet other than Earth. Design & Development: The path of totality would be significantly wider, maybe over 3,600 km / 2,000 mi the wideness of the Moons umbra. More Info: Although moons are a common feature in our Solar System, Mercury does not have any moons. Ganymede orbits the Sun along with Jupiter and its other satellites every 12 Earth years. This site is maintained by the Planetary Science Communications team at, Ganymede has an underground saltwater ocean, 40-Year Study Finds Mysterious Patterns in Temperatures at Jupiter, 10 Things: Dust in the Wind (on Mars and Well Beyond), NASA's LRO Finds Lunar Pits Harbor Comfortable Temperatures, NASA Begins Assembly of Europa Clipper Spacecraft, NASA Telescope Spots Highest-Energy Light Ever Detected From Jupiter, Europa Mission Dispatch: Tracking the Stars, NASA's Juno Spacecraft Hears' Jupiter's Moon, Are Water Plumes Spraying from Europa? Europa Clipper will need to know its orientation while traveling from Earth to Jupiter and in orbit around Jupiter. NASA Calls for New Framework, Hubble Finds Evidence of Persistent Water Vapor in One Hemisphere of Europa, Hubble Shows Winds in Jupiter's Great Red Spot Are Speeding Up, NASA's Artemis Rover to Land Near Nobile Region of Moon's South Pole, NASA to Announce Landing Site for Artemis Lunar Robotic Rover, Full Moon Guide: September - October 2021, NASA's Juno Celebrates 10 Years With New Infrared View of Moon Ganymede. Finding plumes at Europa is an exciting prospect, but scientists warn itll be tricky, even from up close. Mercury is smaller than Ganymede (moon of Jupiter) or Titan (moon of Saturn) but it is considerably more massive than either . Objects smaller than Saturn are not visible at this scale. (See also Visited/imaged bodies. For more about very small objects in the Solar System, see meteoroid, micrometeoroid, cosmic dust, and interplanetary dust cloud. The magnetic field causes auroras, or bright ribbons of glowing gas, that circle the moons poles. Many TNOs are often just assumed to have Pluto's density of 2.0g/cm3, but it is just as likely that they have a comet-like density of only 0.5g/cm3.[4]. [10] For simplicity and comparative purposes, the values are manually calculated assuming that the bodies are all spheres. Text or call 419-240-1935 as I take your astrological questions/requests! stitched together from many New Horizons images. The lunar probe reached the Moon in 1 year, one month, and two weeks. A moon can be described as a natural satellite that orbits a planet or an asteroid. The surface of the moon features extensive plains and catering. Titan also surpasses Mercury in size, but has little else in common with virtually airless Ganymede. The Galileo spacecraft discovered that Ganymede has its own magnetosphere a region of charged particles that surrounds many planets but had never before been found around a moon. Social Media Lead: *Janet Amid is a columnist & radio/media personality and can be heard Monday mornings 8:10 AM to 8:20 AM with Denny, Suzi, and Paul on 93.5 FM. Others are so small that they are more closely related to asteroids and meteors than the planets. The probe completed a flyby of the Moon, and it was launched in 1959. Jupiters icy moon Ganymede is the largest moon in our solar system, even bigger than the planet Mercury, and the dwarf planet Pluto. NASAs Hubble Space Telescope has completed this year's grand tour of the outer solar system. Titan is bigger than Earth's moon, and larger than even the planet Mercury. The Luna 1 probe traveled at around 10,500 km/hr, and it reached the Moon in just 36 hours. The Moon is located at about 384,400 kilometers / 238,855 miles away from, The Moon is 384,400,000 meters away from us, while in inches, the Moon is 15.13 billion inches away from Earth. Most of the trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) listed with a radius smaller than 200km have "assumed sizes based on a generic albedo of 0.09" since they are too far away to directly measure their sizes with existing instruments. The model indicated the icy moons rocky sea bottom might be in contact with salt water. NASAs Juno spacecraft took the most recent images of Ganymedes surface during flybys in June 2021. Its geological history also points to an active world, as giant ice mountains, snows, valleys, and sublimating plains show a frozen world in motion. It forms seasonal clouds and weather patterns at its poles, above the methane hazes that dominate its atmosphere. They soon realized that they were observing a volcanic eruption on Io. During totality, the sky would be much darker than before, and annular solar eclipse would cease to exist. As, such the top ten biggest moons in the Solar System are Ganymede, Titan, Callisto, Io, Luna (Moon), Europa, Triton, Titania, Rhea, and Oberon. When scientists were analyzing Voyagers images of Io, one stood out. Of all the large moons we know of, Callisto shows the smallest differences in composition between core, mantle, and crust, likely due to its formation by slow accretion at such a great distance (and with so little tidal heating) from Jupiter. In 1610, the astronomer Galileo Galilei pointed a telescope toward Jupiter and identified four points of light surrounding the giant planet. When you rank all the moons, small planets, and. The size of a moon varies with the size of the planets that they orbit with some moons being larger than other planets. is gigantic, and if it were hollow, you could fill it with around 64.3 million Earth moons. Our 2021 round-up of NASA planetary science is packed with the years most spectacular images, ground-breaking discoveries, and incredible mission events. Io orbits Jupiter at a distance of 262,000 miles (421,700 kilometers) and completes one orbit every 1.8 Earth days. The odd one out is Titan, the largest moon in Saturn's system. Examples include San Francisco (883,305 in 47 square miles), Boston (694,583 in 48 square miles) and Minneapolis . Europa: The smallest and most hospitable of Jupiters four large moons, Europa is covered in water-ice with a subsurface, liquid ocean. The exceptions are objects that have been visited by a probe, or have passed close enough to Earth to be imaged. Jupiter's icy moon Ganymede is the largest moon in our solar system, even bigger than the planet Mercury, and the dwarf planet Pluto. A new study finally reveals higher-frequency X-rays and explains why they eluded another mission 30 years ago. RANK. The Sun has a radius of 696.340 km / 432.685 mi and a diameter of 1.39 million km / 864.000 mi. Is Pluto larger than the moon? JPL's lucky peanuts are an unofficial tradition at big mission events. Computer models show Ganymede might have ice and oceans stacked up in several layers like a club sandwich. 25 results for "moons that are larger than mercury" hide this ad. 10.) The largest of these may have a hydrostatic-equilibrium shape, but most are irregular. The Galileo spacecraft, the first to orbit Jupiter, made the major discovery that Ganymede has its own magnetosphere a region of charged particles that surrounds many planets but had never before been found around a moon. In mythology, Ganymede ("GAN uh meed") was a beautiful young boy who was carried to Olympus by Zeus (the Greek equivalent of the Roman god Jupiter) disguised as an eagle. Totality would last much longer, perhaps more than an hour. Juno used its infrared instrument during recent flybys of Ganymede to create this map a decade after Junos launch. Here are the 10 largest ones we have, along with what makes them so interesting. Contents Is IO bigger than Mercury? 2.) The surface area of the Moon is equivalent to the surface area of Russia, the United States, and Canada combined. Galileo discovered that these four objects were moons in orbit around Jupiter, and they were later named the Galilean moons of Jupiter. The number of digits is not an endorsement of significant figures. Volume-wise, the ratio is 2.768. VIPER is the first resource-mapping mission on the surface of another celestial body. Mercury is the smallest planet. This is the time it takes Jupiter to orbit the Sun. It has the lowest density and surface gravity of any of the Galilean satellites. Science instruments and other hardware for the spacecraft will come together in the missions final phase before a launch to Europa in 2024. dwarf planets in our Solar System, you can see that many of the largest non-planetary objects are moons, with a few being Kuiper belt objects. The following objects have a mean radius of at least400 km. Titans atmosphere is the richest of any moon in the Solar System, with an atmospheric pressure at its surface greater than even that of Earth. The. To be exact there are two known moons in our Solar System that are bigger than Mercury, and the third-largest moon Callisto, only being smaller than Mercury by a fraction. Triton, during its capture, must have cleared out a huge fraction of the Neptunian system! This high-resolution color composite of Titania. It was only ever studied up close once: by Voyager 2 in 1986. Its average orbital distance is 58 million kilometers from the sun and it only has a. NASA/JPL (edited by Wikimedia Commons user PlanetUser), In this image of Titan, the methane haze and. The Sun is gigantic, and if it were hollow, you could fill it with around 64.3 million Earth moons. It might even have ice and oceans stacked up in several layers like a club sandwich. This suggests to scientists that Ganymede's crust has been under tension from global tectonic processes. Smaller and less massive by far than Triton, and less than half the diameter of Mercury, the Plutonian system is the first one in the Kuiper belt to be imaged from up close. Ganymede is much colder than Earth, with daytime surface temperatures ranging from -297 to -171 degrees Fahrenheit (90 to 160 Kelvin). This page showcases our resources for those interested in learning more about Jupiter. The magnetic field causes auroras, which are ribbons of glowing, hot, electrified gas, in regions circling the north and south poles of the moon. The size of a moon varies with the size of the planets that they orbit with some moons being larger than other planets. What is the best estimate of the capacity of a juice box? There is so much to learn from looking at whats around us and where it is. Many of the objects we currently think of as having some importance in the Solar System, such as Ceres, the largest asteroid (at #25), or Sedna, a possible Oort cloud object (at #23), dont come close to cracking the top 10. In 1610, Galileo discovered the four large moons of Jupiter. Called Ganymede, it has a diameter of 3,275 miles (5,270 kilometers). ", "JPL Small-Body Database Browser: 2685 Masursky (1981 JN)", "JPL Small-Body Database Browser: 1509 Esclangona (1938 YG)", "JPL Small-Body Database Browser: 9P/Tempel 1", "Arecibo Radar Returns with Asteroid Phaethon Images", "Hubble Space Telescope STIS Observations of Comet 19P/BORRELLY during the Deep Space 1 Encounter", "JPL Small-Body Database Browser: 5535 Annefrank (1942 EM)", "JPL Small-Body Database Browser: 3749 Balam (1982 BG1)", "(3749) Balam, S/2002 (3749) 1, and third component", "Saturn's Mysterious Arc-Embedded Moons: Recycled Fluff? Ganymede is a unique planet, and it is the only moon in the solar system that produces its own magnetic field. Their weak gravity allows the gases to escape into space. The other three Galilean moons are also tidally locked. On average, it would take you around three days to get to the Moon. The only moons larger than Mercury are Ganymede and Titan. Unlike the other moons on this list so far, however, Europas icy surface and large volume make it the smoothest object in the Solar System, despite its striated appearance. Ganymede is likely about the same age as the rest of the solar system about 4.5 billion years old. Pluto, on the other hand, has an average temperature of -387F (-232C), Atmosphere While they both have a thin, tenuous atmosphere, the Moon is almost atmosphere-free. This friction is created as Jupiters gravity tugs on Io, compressing and stretching the moon. Saturns enormous satellite gives Ganymede a run for its money as the largest non-planet of all. Ganymede and Titan, the two largest moons in our solar system, are larger than planet Mercury while Earth's moon is smaller. What two dimensional and infinitely large. Managing Editor: [7] However, Ceres (r = 470km) is the smallest body for which detailed measurements are consistent with hydrostatic equilibrium,[8] whereas Iapetus (r = 735km) is the largest icy body that has been found to not be in hydrostatic equilibrium. Titan, like its parent planet, also ranks in the second place, being the 2nd biggest moon in the Solar System. An American electropop duo named their band Ganymede and released a song called Operation Ganymede in 2008. ), Radius estimated using equatorial radius and assuming body is spherical, Radius has been determined by various methods, such as optical (, Best fit, assuming Haumea is in hydrostatic equilibrium, Radius estimated by using three radii and assuming body is spheroid, The mass estimate is based on the assumed density of 1.2 g/cm, Name of body, including alternative names using, Reference column specifically for radius (r) and mass (M) citations, Roatsch Jaumann et al.

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