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Relative masses of the Solar planets. Jupiter at 71% of the total and Saturn at 21% dominate the system. Relative masses of the solid bodies of the Solar System. Earth at 48% and Venus at 39% dominate. Bodies less massive than Pluto are not visible at this scale. Relative masses of the rounded moons of the Solar System.
Of the Solar System's eight planets and its nine most likely dwarf planets, six planets and seven dwarf planets are known to be orbited by at least 300 natural satellites, or moons. At least 19 of them are large enough to be gravitationally rounded; of these, all are covered by a crust of ice except for Earth's Moon and Jupiter's Io . [1]
A natural satellite is, in the most common usage, an astronomical body that orbits a planet, dwarf planet, or small Solar System body (or sometimes another natural satellite). Natural satellites are colloquially referred to as moons, a derivation from the Moon of Earth . In the Solar System, there are six planetary satellite systems containing ...
The number of dwarf planets in the Solar System is unknown. Estimates have run as high as 200 in the Kuiper belt and over 10,000 in the region beyond. However, consideration of the surprisingly low densities of many large trans-Neptunian objects, as well as spectroscopic analysis of their surfaces, suggests that the number of dwarf planets may be much lower, perhaps only nine among bodies ...
The largest, Ganymede, is the largest moon in the Solar System and surpasses the planet Mercury in size (though not mass). Callisto is only slightly smaller than Mercury in size; the smaller ones, Io and Europa, are about the size of the Moon. The three inner moons — Io, Europa, and Ganymede — are in a 4:2:1 orbital resonance with
Size. With a diameter of about 5,270 kilometres (3,270 mi) and a mass of 1.48 × 10 20 tonnes (1.48 × 10 23 kg; 3.26 × 10 23 lb), Ganymede is the largest and most massive moon in the Solar System. [43] It is slightly more massive than the second most massive moon, Saturn's satellite Titan, and is more than twice as massive as the Earth's Moon.
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System.A gas giant, Jupiter's mass is more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined and slightly less than one one-thousandth the mass of the Sun. Jupiter orbits the Sun at a distance of 5.20 AU (778.5 Gm) with an orbital period of 11.86 years.
Titan, at 5,149 km diameter, is the second largest moon in the Solar System and Saturn's largest. Out of all the large moons, Titan is the only one with a dense (surface pressure of 1.5 atm), cold atmosphere, primarily made of nitrogen with a small fraction of methane.