Except for Mercury and Venus, all the other planets in the Solar System have a number of solid celestial bodies, which are known as Natural Satellites, they surround the planets, learn more about them in this post.
What are Natural Satellites?
Un Natural satellite it is an organism that orbits around a planet, it is not considered artificial because it is not made by human beings, such organisms are often referred to as moons, the expression is commonly used to mention non-artificial satellites of planets, in its sometimes to dwarf planets or minor planets.
There are 240 known moons within the solar system, containing 163 orbiting near planets, four orbiting dwarf planets, and many more orbiting small solar system bodies.
The moon that we observe is a natural satellite, the moons that are close to other planets are also Natural Satellites, the satellites that people place in space are called Artificial satellites.
All scientists agree that planets and other large space entities achieve Natural Satellites by imprisoning with the gravitational pull of the larger body, this means that quite a few moons used to gestate through space when they got too close to a planet.
The planet's gravity pulled the moon out of its forward motion through space and caused it to move (or orbit) around the planet.
Our moon was created from a huge impact on Earth, this means that a large asteroid crashed into Earth and a lot of rocks and dust were shot into space, all this material clumped together and formed the Moon in space, far enough close enough to Earth to get caught in its gravitational pull.
Characteristics of Natural Satellites
The Natural Satellites are characterized according to the following:
tidal force
The gravitational attraction executed by a celestial body that increases the tides in another body within the gravitational field, this depends on the variable distance between the bodies.
Altitude
Altitude is the vertical distance of an object from a known level, which is taken as a reference and is called zero level, in most cases, but not always, this is sea level and is measured in meters above level. from sea.
Height above sea level is called absolute height, and in this case it is one of three earth coordinates along with latitude and longitude.
types of orbits
Natural Satellites are divided according to their movement and orbit:
Regular
Regular satellites are those that turn in the same direction as the planet.
Irregular
It is a natural satellite that is always following a distant orbit or that is diagonal and sometimes backward, they were held by their mother planet, in contrast to the regular satellites, which were created in orbit around it.
The irregular satellites of the planets have always been identified as a diverse number of very small objects that live in orbits with high tendencies and peculiarities..
Classification of satellites in the solar system
Satellites in the solar system are classified as follows:
- Pastoral satellites: It is known as a moon that orbits around the margin of a planetary ring, securing the ring particles by gravitational attraction and constraining the ring to a visibly precise fringe.
- Trojan satellites: They are the asteroids that carry an orbit with a planet, but bump into each other at the initial and final Lagrangian sites.
- Co-orbital satellites: They are those where at least two bodies communicate the same mean orbit.
- Asteroid satellites: Most of this ancient space debris can be found orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter within the main asteroid belt.
All asteroids have different sizes, the largest is around 530 kilometers in diameter and with bodies less than 10 meters wide, the total mass of most mixed asteroids is less than that of Earth's Moon..
- Satellites of satellites: There are no known Natural Satellites that orbit the natural satellite of another body, it is not very precise to know if there are objects that manage to be firm in the long term, in most cases, the tidal effects of their primaries encourage said system to be unstable , the gravity of other nearby objects would alter the orbit of the satellite of the satellite until it moved away or impacted on its primary.
Natural satellites in the solar system
According to the studies carried out, it can be identified that there are 171 moons or Natural Satellites, orbiting on the planets found in the solar system, the following information shows a list of one of the main planetary moons:
- Earth: Moon.
- Mars: Deimos and Phobos.
- Jupiter: Amalthea, Adrasthea, Aitné, Callisto, Europa, Ganymede, Io.
- Saturn: Dione, Enceladus, Hyperion, Iapetus, Methone, Mimas, Mundilfari, Phoebe, Rhea, Tethys, Titan.
- Uranus: Ariel, Caliban, Cordelia, Cressida, Miranda, Oberon, Titania, Umbriel.
- Neptune: Galatea, Halimede, Laomedeia, Nereida, Triton.
- Pluto: Charon, Hydra, Nyx, Cerberus, Styx.
Among the most important satellites are:
Luna
The Moon is the only natural satellite of the Earth, was created 4.600 billion years ago and is said to have been created when Earth collided with a planet-sized object called Theia, it is the fifth largest moon in our solar system and is the second brightest object in the sky after of the sun.
Enceladus
Enceladus is a small icy moon of Saturn that is geologically active, with a tiered tectonized region at the south pole characterized by excess thermal emission and geysers of salty ice grains, water vapor, and organic compounds.
Ganymede
Jupiter's moon, Ganymede, is the largest satellite in the solar system, it is much larger than the Natural Satellites of Mercury and Pluto, is only slightly smaller than the planet Mars and would simply be classified as a planet if the sun orbited instead of Jupiter.
Ganymede has a diameter of approximately 5,270 km, which makes it larger than the planet Mercury. Orbiting Jupiter at a distance of 1,070,000 km, Ganymede's relatively low density of 1.93 grams per cubic cm indicates that its composition is roughly half rock and half water ice by mass.
Size of Natural Satellites in the Solar System
The satellites mostly have the largest planet in the solar system, Jupiter has 79 known astronomical satellites, including the largest satellite in the solar system which is Ganymede.
El Planet Saturn, is one of the largest planets, it has sixty-two satellites, among which is Titan, which is the largest of them and is the largest in the solar system, then there is Uranus, which has twenty-seven satellites, then Neptune, which has fourteen .
Here are a few:
Ganymede: It is the satellite of Jupiter and is known by scientists as the most gigantic satellite in the entire solar system, it has a diameter of 5268 kilometers, which means eight percent more than Mercury, which is the planet closest to Earth. Sun.
Titan: It is the satellite of Saturn, it is the largest satellite number two in the solar system, the diameter of Titan is 5152 kilometers, which is fifty percent more than the moon, titanium also exceeds the size of the planet Mercury.
Callisto: It is the satellite of Jupiter, the diameter of Callisto is approximately ninety-nine percent of the diameter of Mercury.
I: It is the satellite of Jupiter, in turn, it is the most geologically active body in the solar system, since there are more than four hundred active volcanoes on its surface, in some volcanoes, the manifestations are so powerful that they reach a height of 500 kilometers.
Europe: It belongs to the satellite of Jupiter, in size it is less than the moon, its surface consists of ice, dotted with cracks, there is a hypothesis that under a thick layer of ice there is an ocean of water, in which the presence of microscopic life.
Triton: The largest satellite of Neptune, Triton's mass is 99.5% of the total mass of all currently known Neptune satellites, Triton's size is also larger than the largest dwarf planets in the solar system - Pluto and Eris.