HETANEWS.com – The moon, which is referred to as a natural satellite, is a solid object and only has a small atmosphere. Quoting NASA, there are hundreds of moons in the solar system.
In fact, some asteroids have been found to have small moons. Starting from the rocky planets in the inner solar system, such as Mercury and Venus which have no satellites at all, Earth has one, and Mars has two small moons.
Then, outside the solar system, the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn and the ice giants Uranus and Neptune have dozens of moons.
Why does Jupiter have so many moons?
Reporting from How Stuff Works, in December 2022, a team of astronomers discovered 12 previously unreported moons around Planet Jupiter.
This finding makes Jupiter’s moons 92 and places Jupiter as the planet with the most moons. The reason why Jupiter has so many moons has a lot to do with its enormous mass, which is equivalent to that of more than 300 Earths.
Earth’s only Moon most likely formed billions of years ago after a large proto-planet crashed into the primordial Earth.
Meanwhile, reported by ZME Science, Jupiter and other giant planets have a habit of ‘catching’ rocky objects, ranging from small asteroids to mini planets complete with volcanic activity, such as Io.
jupiter not only has a very strong gravitational pull thanks to its mass, it is also quite far from the Sun.
It is about 5 times farther from the Sun than Earth and completes a full orbit every 11.86 years.
This great distance allows Jupiter to exert a wider area of influence or control because the Sun’s gravitational influence weakens the farther a planet is from it.
With such a wide net, it’s no wonder Jupiter has moons orbiting 23.5 million miles, as do Pasiphae and Sinope.
Meanwhile, Venus and Mercury, the two closest planets to the sun in the solar system, have no moon at all, while Earth has a very small moon.
Also contributing to Jupiter’s large number of moons is the gas giant’s planetary shape. A regularly spherical body would have a more stable orbit than a potato-shaped one.
Jupiter is nearly perfectly spherical and this may help it catch some additional small satellites, especially in its lower orbits.
