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The Solar System's Major Moons

Filed under pretty pictures, amateur astrophotos, amateur image processing, scale comparisons, presentation slides, the Moon, Jupiter's moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Saturn's moons, Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione, Rhea, Titan, Iapetus, Uranus' moons, Neptune's moons, Triton, Voyager 1 and 2, Galileo, Cassini

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The Solar System's Major Moons The Solar System contains 18 or 19 natural satellites of planets that are large enough for self-gravity to make them round. (Why the uncertain number? Neptune’s moon Proteus is on the edge.) They are shown here to scale with each other. Two of them are larger than Mercury; seven are larger than Pluto and Eris. If they were not orbiting planets, many of these worlds would be called “planets,” and scientists who study them are called “planetary scientists.”

Montage by Emily Lakdawalla. The Moon: Gari Arrillaga. Other moons data: NASA/JPL. Processing by Ted Stryk, Gordan Ugarkovic, Emily Lakdawalla, and Jason Perry.

Permission is freely granted to reuse this graphic for educational purposes, though we would like to hear from you if you do!

Here are three alternative layouts of this graphic, without text. Email me if you wish me to add text, or to arrange them differently.

The Solar System's Major Moons (sorted by location)

Montage by Emily Lakdawalla. The Moon: Gari Arrillaga. Other moons data: NASA/JPL. Processing by Ted Stryk, Gordan Ugarkovic, Emily Lakdawalla, and Jason Perry.

The Solar System's Major Moons (sorted by location)
The Solar System's Major Moons (scattered)

Montage by Emily Lakdawalla. The Moon: Gari Arrillaga. Other moons data: NASA/JPL. Processing by Ted Stryk, Gordan Ugarkovic, Emily Lakdawalla, and Jason Perry.

The Solar System's Major Moons (scattered)
The Solar System's Major Moons (ordered by size)

Montage by Emily Lakdawalla. The Moon: Gari Arrillaga. Other moons data: NASA/JPL. Processing by Ted Stryk, Gordan Ugarkovic, Emily Lakdawalla, and Jason Perry.

The Solar System's Major Moons (ordered by size)

Copyright holder: Emily Lakdawalla

Copyright holder: Ted Stryk

Copyright holder: Gordan Ugarkovic

Copyright holder: Jason Perry

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Contact us to request publication permission from the copyright holder. Original image data dated on or about May 30, 2013

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