Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Irregular moons are probably minor planets that have been captured from surrounding space. Most irregular moons are less than 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) in diameter. The earliest published discovery of a moon other than Earth's was by Galileo Galilei, who discovered the four Galilean moons orbiting Jupiter in 1610. Over the following three ...
Claimed moons of Earth. This asteroid's orbit keeps it near the Earth, but not orbiting it in the usual sense. When analyzing its orbit from the perspective of different bodies, the presumed quasi-satellite does seem to have a more stable location near the Earth. The orbit of 2020 CD 3 around the Earth. The gray band is the orbit of the Moon.
Sun–Earth L 4. L 4 is the Sun–Earth Lagrange point located close to the Earth's orbit 60° ahead of Earth. Asteroid (706765) 2010 TK 7 is the first discovered tadpole orbit companion to Earth, orbiting L 4; like Earth, its mean distance to the Sun is about one astronomical unit. Asteroid (614689) 2020 XL 5 is the second Earth trojan ...
A natural satelliteis, in the most common usage, an astronomical bodythat orbitsa 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 Moonof Earth. In the Solar System, there are six planetary satellite systemscontaining 288 ...
In geophysical terms the Moon is a planetary-mass object or satellite planet. Its mass is 1.2% that of the Earth, and its diameter is 3,474 km (2,159 mi), roughly one-quarter of Earth's (about as wide as Australia ). [ 17]
Tidal locking results in the Moon rotating about its axis in about the same time it takes to orbit Earth. Except for libration, this results in the Moon keeping the same face turned toward Earth, as seen in the left figure. If the Moon were not rotating at all, it would alternately show its near and far sides to Earth, while moving around Earth ...
The percentage columns show the distance from the orbit compared to the semimajor axis. E.g. for the Moon, L 1 is 326 400 km from Earth's center, which is 84.9% of the Earth–Moon distance or 15.1% "in front of" (Earthwards from) the Moon; L 2 is located 448 900 km from Earth's center, which is 116.8% of the Earth–Moon distance or 16.8% ...
A planetary-mass moon is a planetary-mass object that is also a natural satellite. They are large and ellipsoidal (sometimes spherical) in shape. Moons may be in hydrostatic equilibrium due to tidal or radiogenic heating, in some cases forming a subsurface ocean. Two moons in the Solar System, Ganymede and Titan, are larger than the planet ...