This article is from the series "The Solar System" where we will be sharing interesting facts about everything, from the origin of the Solar System to the mysterious massive planet 9. Please follow our social media accounts to get regular updates.
During the creation of the Solar System, the initial Protoplanets went through a lot of collisions. These collisions not only structured the system but also created partners of the planets. These partners are the moons that not only orbit the planets but also stabilise them. Some planets just trapped astronomical objects to orbit around them which became their moons. While the total number of moons in the Solar system is around 200, there are a few who display interesting features.
Here are some interesting facts about some fascinating natural satellites aka Moons (Part 2):
The surface area of moon Mimas is slightly less than the land area of Spain
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Janus’s mean orbital radius from Saturn is, as of 2006, only 50 km less than that of Epimetheus, a distance smaller than either moon’s mean radius
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Spaceprobe Huygens by European Space Agency (ESA) landed on Titan on January 14, 2005, discovering that many of its surface features seem to have been formed by fluids at some point in the past. Titan is the most distant body from Earth to have a space probe land on its surface
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The equatorial ridge on the moon Iapetus is 1,300 km (810 mi) long, 20 km (12 mi) wide and 13 km (8.1 mi) high
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Over 100 geysers have been identified. Some of the water vapor falls back as “snow”; the rest escapes, and supplies most of the material making up Saturn‘s E ring
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Rhea is the second-largest moon of Saturn and the ninth-largest moon in the Solar System
Astronomers just detected 20 new moons around Saturn. Saturn now has 82 known moons, whereas Jupiter has 79 which makes Saturn as the planet with most moons.
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The images cover about 40% of the surface, but only 24% was photographed with the precision required for geological mapping
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Triton is thought to have been a dwarf planet captured from the Kuiper belt
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It is shaped more like an irregular polyhedron
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Neso orbits Neptune at a distance of more than 48 Gm (million km), making it (as of 2015) the most distant known moon of any planet
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The New Horizons spacecraft is the only probe that has visited the Pluto system. It approached Charon to within 27,000 km (17,000 mi) in 2015
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Charon’s diameter is 1,212 km (753 mi), just over half that of Pluto. Charon has 12.2% the mass of Pluto
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Source: Wikipedia
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