Jupiter’s moon Ganymede is proving to be a fascinating world. Not only is it the largest moon in our solar system, bigger than the planet Mercury and the dwarf planet Pluto, but NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has found the best evidence yet for an underground saltwater ocean on Ganymede. The ocean is thought to have more water than all the water on Earth's surface. Ganymede’s ocean is ...
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.
The planetary system we call home is located in an outer spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy. Our solar system consists of our star, the Sun, and everything bound to it by gravity – the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune; dwarf planets such as Pluto; dozens of moons; and millions of asteroids, comets, and meteoroids. Beyond our own solar system, there ...
Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is an icy world whose surface is completely obscured by a golden hazy atmosphere. Titan is the second largest moon in our solar system. Only Jupiter's moon Ganymede is larger, by just 2 percent. Titan is bigger than Earth's moon, and larger than even the planet Mercury. This mammoth moon is the only moon in the solar system with a dense atmosphere, and it’s the ...
Callisto is Jupiter’s second largest moon and the third largest moon in our solar system. It’s about the same size as Mercury. In the past, some scientists thought of Callisto as a boring “ugly duckling moon” and a “hunk of rock and ice.” That’s because the crater-covered world didn’t seem to have much going on—no active volcanoes or shifting tectonic plates. But data from ...