Top 10 Planets With The Largest Number Of Natural Satellite

The Solar System is made up of 8 planets, 180 satellites, comets, meteors, and asteroids that rotate around the Sun. In the most common sense, a natural satellite is an astronomical body that circles a planet, dwarf planet, or tiny solar system body (or sometimes another natural satellite). There is only one moon, despite the fact that natural satellites are commonly referred to as moons.

There are six planetary satellite systems in the Solar System, each with 205 known natural satellites. Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris are among the IAU-listed dwarf planets that have natural satellites. There are 334 other minor planets known to have natural satellites as of September 2018.

A planet's mass is typically 10000 times that of any natural satellite orbiting it, and its diameter is correspondingly much larger. The Earth-Moon system is the only exception in the Solar System; the Moon is 0.273 times the diameter of Earth, measuring 3,474 km (2,158 miles). The Neptune–Triton system has a ratio of 0.055, the Saturn–Titan system has a ratio of 0.044, the Jupiter–Ganymede system has a ratio of 0.038, and the Uranus–Titania system has a ratio of 0.031. Charon, among the five known planetoids in the Solar System, has the biggest ratio, measuring 0.52 times the diameter of Pluto.

Galileo Galilei discovered the four Galilean moons orbiting Jupiter in 1610, which was the first published finding of a moon other than the Earth's. Only a handful of additional moons were discovered throughout the next three centuries. In the 1970s, trips to other planets, most notably the Voyager 1 and 2 missions, saw a boom in the number of moons identified, and surveys since 2000, largely using huge, ground-based optical observatories, have found many more, all of which are irregular.

The article discusses the top 10 planets with moons, the article also provides a brief description of the planet with the moons, the article also answers the questions like what is a natural satellite or moon, which planet has the most moons and their general description. 

(Image will be uploaded soon)

Definition of a moon

At least 218 natural satellites, or moons, are known to orbit the Solar System's planets and most likely dwarf planets. Except for Earth's Moon and Jupiter's Io, at least 19 of them are large enough to be gravitationally spherical, and all of them are covered with ice. Several of the largest are in hydrostatic equilibrium and would be classified as dwarf planets or planets if they were in direct orbit around the Sun rather than in their current states (orbiting planets or dwarf planets).

What is termed a "moon" has no fixed bottom limit. Every natural celestial body with an identified orbit around a Solar System planet, some as small as a kilometre across, has been referred to as a moon, however, objects a tenth that size within Saturn's rings that have not been directly detected have been referred to as moonlets. Asteroid moonlets, like Dactyl, are small asteroid moons (natural satellites of asteroids).

Regular moons have prograde orbits (they orbit in the direction of their planets' rotation) and lie close to the plane of their equators, while irregular moons' orbits can be pro- or retrograde (against the direction of their planets' rotation) and often lie at extreme angles to their planets' equators. Irregular moons are most likely small planets grabbed from the surrounding space. The majority of irregular moons have a diameter of less than 10 kilometres (6.2 miles).

The highest limit is likewise a little unclear. Instead of primary and satellite, two orbiting entities are sometimes referred to as a double planet. Asteroids like 90 Antiope are classified as double asteroids, although they haven't compelled a precise definition of a moon. According to some scholars, the Pluto–Charon system is a double (dwarf) planet system. The most popular dividing line between what is deemed a moon and what isn't is whether the barycentre lies below the surface of the larger body, however, this is rather arbitrary because it depends on both distance and relative mass.

List of Top 10 Planets with the Largest Number of the Natural Satellite

Mercury and Venus are the only inner planets without natural satellites, while Earth has one big natural satellite, the Moon, and Mars has two tiny natural satellites, Phobos and Deimos. The four Galilean moons, Saturn's Titan, and Neptune's Triton are among the giant planets' many natural satellites, which include half a dozen that are comparable in size to Earth's Moon. Saturn has six more mid-sized natural satellites that have reached hydrostatic equilibrium, whereas Uranus has five more.

Jupiter's Galilean moons (Ganymede, Callisto, Io, and Europa), Saturn's moon Titan, Earth's moon, and Neptune's captured natural satellite Triton are the Solar System's seven largest natural satellites (those larger than 2,500 km wide). The smallest of these, Triton, has more mass than all of the other natural satellites combined. Similarly, the smallest of the nine mid-sized natural satellites, Titania, Oberon, Rhea, Iapetus, Charon, Ariel, Umbriel, Dione, and Tethys, has more mass than all of the smaller natural satellites combined.

There are about 80 known natural satellites of dwarf planets, minor planets, and other small Solar System bodies, in addition to the natural satellites of the major planets. According to some estimates, up to 15% of all trans-Neptunian objects may have satellites.

Mentioned below is the list of the top 10 planets with moons, the list also mentions which planet has the most moons. Apart from this, a brief description of the planet with most moons is also summarized below. 

Jupiter

Jupiter is a planet with the most moons, it has 67 moons. It is named after the Roman god Jupiter and is the fifth planet from the Sun. Its eight regular moons are divided into two groups: the Galilean moons, which are the size of a planet, and the Amalthea group, which is much smaller. The 71 irregular moons that have been discovered are divided into two categories: prograde and retrograde. The Himalia group and three more in groups of one make up the prograde satellites. The retrograde moons are divided into three categories: Carme, Ananke, and Pasiphae.

Saturn  

Saturn has 62 moons. It is the sixth planet from the Sun and the Solar System's second-largest planet after Jupiter. The majority of them are little. Titan, the Solar System's second-biggest moon, is one of seven moons large enough to be in hydrostatic equilibrium. The rings of Saturn are made up of ice objects ranging in size from a few centimetres to hundreds of metres in diameter, each orbiting the planet in its own orbit. The disturbance they cause in the surrounding ring material has detected at least 150 "moonlets" implanted in the rings, albeit this is likely to be a small sampling of the total population of such objects.

Uranus 

It has 27 moons, five of which are sufficiently large to have reached hydrostatic equilibrium. Within Uranus' ring system, there are 13 normal moons and additional nine irregular moons. It is the seventh planet from the Sun, with a bigger diameter than Neptune but a lesser mass. It has a comparable chemical makeup to Neptune, and both have bulk chemical compositions that differ from Jupiter and Saturn.

Neptune

It has 14 moons, Triton, the largest, is responsible for about 99.5 per cent of the mass orbiting the planet. Triton is massive enough to have attained hydrostatic equilibrium, yet it has a retrograde orbit, which suggests it was grabbed from a minor planet. Neptune has seven known normal inner satellites and six irregular outer satellites. It is the Solar System's eighth and farthest known planet. It is the Solar System's fourth-largest planet by diameter, third-massive planet, and densest big planet.

Pluto

Pluto has 5 moons; its largest moon, Charon, is more than half the size of Pluto and huge enough to orbit a point outside Pluto's surface. It is named after the ferryman who transported souls across the River Styx. Each orbits the other, constituting a binary system known colloquially as a double-dwarf-planet system. Nix, Hydra, Kerberos, and Styx, Pluto's other four moons, are much smaller and circle the Pluto–Charon system. It's a dwarf planet beyond Neptune in the Kuiper belt, a ring of worlds beyond Neptune. In 1930, Clyde Tombaugh discovered it.

Mars

Mars only has 2 moons namely, Phobos and Deimos. It is the fourth planet from the Sun and the Solar System's second-smallest planet after Mercury. It is often referred to as the "Red Planet" and is named after the Roman god of war.

Haumea

Haumea also has 2 moons namely,  Hiʻiaka and Namaka. It is a dwarf planet beyond the orbit of Neptune. It was found in 2005 by a team led by José Luis Ortiz Moreno of the Sierra Nevada Observatory in Spain and a team led by Mike Brown of Caltech at the US Palomar Observatory, though the latter claim has been disputed.

Earth  

Earth has only 1 natural satellite, the moon. The asteroids 3753 Cruithne and 2002 AA29 are at least two of Earth's co-orbitals. It's the third planet from the sun, and the only one known to have a free-oxygen atmosphere, seas of water on its surface, and, of course, life.

Makemake

It has only 1 moon. It is a dwarf planet found on March 31, 2005, by a team led by Michael E. Brown. It is one of the bodies that caused Pluto's status as a planet to be revoked.

Eris 

Eris has only 1 natural satellite. It is last in the list of top 10 planets with the largest number of the natural satellites. Dysnomia is Eris' only big known moon. It's impossible to measure its size precisely; one estimate puts its radius at 35057.5 kilometres. It is the most massive and second-largest dwarf planet in the known solar system in terms of volume. In January 2005, a Palomar Observatory-based team led by Mike Brown identified this.

In conclusion of the article, we have answered the top 10 planets with the largest number of the natural satellites and named the planets with the most moons. The list contains a brief idea about the natural satellites but there is vast information still to be discovered in the universe.