The Moon as seen from Earth Ammonia Carbon dioxide The Moon is the planet Earth's only natural satellite. It has no formal name other than "The Moon", although in English it is occasionally called Luna (Latin for moon), or Selene, to distinguish it from the generic "moon" (natural satellites of other planets are also called moons). Its symbol is a crescent (Unicode: ☾). The terms lunar, selene/seleno-, and cynthion (from the Lunar deities Selene and Cynthia) refer to the Moon (apo ...

Including:

• Moon - The two sides
• Moon - Orbit
• Moon - Earth & Moon
• Moon - Origin and history
• Moon - Physical characteristics
• Moon - Composition
• Moon - Selenography
• Moon - Presence of water
• Moon - Magnetic field
• Moon - Atmosphere
• Moon - Eclipses
• Moon - Occultation of stars
• Moon - Observation of the Moon
• Moon - Exploration of the Moon
• Moon - Human understanding of the Moon
• Moon - Myth and folk culture
• Moon - The Moon as muse
• Moon - Astrology
• Moon - Scientific understanding
• Moon - Meteor impact on the Moon
• Moon - Legal status
• Moon - Satellites
• Moon - Surface installations
• Moon - Lunar location listings

Read more here: » Moon: Encyclopedia - Moon

See also:

Moon, Moon - The two sides of the Moon, Moon - Orbit, Moon - Earth & Moon, Moon - Tidal Effects, Moon - Double-planet hypotheses, Moon - Origin and history, Moon - Physical characteristics, Moon - Composition, Moon - Selenography, Moon - Presence of water, Moon - Magnetic field, Moon - Atmosphere, Moon - Eclipses, Moon - Occultation of stars, Moon - Observation of the Moon, Moon - Exploration of the Moon, Moon - Human understanding of the Moon, Moon - Myth and folk culture, Moon - The Moon as muse, Moon - Astrology, Moon - Scientific understanding, Moon - Meteor impact on the Moon, Moon - Legal status, Moon - Satellites, Moon - Surface installations, Moon - Lunar location listings

Read more here: » Moon: Encyclopedia II - Moon - Human understanding of the Moon

Moon - Myth and folk culture. Moon - The Moon as muse. The Moon has been the subject of many works of art and literature and the inspiration for countless others. Moon - Astrology. Moon - Scientific understanding. A 5,000 year old rock carving at Knowth, Ireland may represent the ...

See also:

Moon, Moon - The two sides, Moon - Orbit, Moon - Earth & Moon, Moon - Origin and history, Moon - Physical characteristics, Moon - Composition, Moon - Selenography, Moon - Presence of water, Moon - Magnetic field, Moon - Atmosphere, Moon - Eclipses, Moon - Occultation of stars, Moon - Observation of the Moon, Moon - Exploration of the Moon, Moon - Human understanding of the Moon, Moon - Myth and folk culture, Moon - The Moon as muse, Moon - Astrology, Moon - Scientific understanding, Moon - Meteor impact on the Moon, Moon - Legal status, Moon - Satellites, Moon - Surface installations, Moon - Lunar location listings

Read more here: » Moon: Encyclopedia II - Moon - Human understanding of the Moon

A full moon night is the best time for meditation, when the noises of the day give way to the silence of the night. Open your heart and let your eyes be filled with the moon's nectar. Absorb this nectar into your whole being. Feel the coolness and the tenderness in the atmosphere.

Read more here: » Meditation and Moon: Silvery Magic Of The Full Moon

Pluto is the ninth planet in the solar system. Discovered in 1930 and immediately classified as a planet, its status is currently under dispute. Pluto has an eccentric orbit that is highly inclined in respect to the other planets and takes it inside the orbit of Neptune. Its largest moon is Charon, discovered in 1978; two smaller moons were discovered in 2005. Pluto's astronomical symbol is a P-L monogram, ♇. This represents both the first two letters of the name Pluto and the initials of Percival Lowell ...

Including:

• Pluto - Discovery and naming
• Pluto - Orbit
• Pluto - Physical characteristics
• Pluto - Mass and size
• Pluto - Atmosphere
• Pluto - Appearance
• Pluto - Pluto's moons
• Pluto - Charon
• Pluto - The outer moons
• Pluto - Exploration of Pluto
• Pluto - The Pluto debate
• Pluto - Planet X?
• Pluto - Minor planet?
• Pluto - New discoveries
• Pluto - Pluto in popular culture

Read more here: » Pluto: Encyclopedia - Pluto

Click image for description Venus, the second planet from the Sun, is named after the Roman goddess Venus. A terrestrial planet, it is sometimes called Earth's "sister planet", as the two are very similar in size and bulk composition. Although all planets' orbits are elliptical, Venus's orbit is the closest to circular, with an eccentricity of less than 1%. As Venus is closer to the Sun than the Earth, it always appears in roughly the same direction from Earth as the Sun (the greatest e ...

Including:

• Venus - Physical characteristics
• Venus - Atmosphere
• Venus - Surface features
• Venus - Venus' moon
• Venus - Aspects
• Venus - Observations and explorations of Venus
• Venus - Lowest distances to earth
• Venus - Cultural references

Read more here: » Venus: Encyclopedia - Venus

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and by far the largest within our solar system. Some have described the solar system as consisting of the Sun, Jupiter, and assorted debris,[2]; some describe Jupiter as the solar system's vacuum cleaner, due to its immense gravity well. It and the other gas giants - Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, are sometimes referred to as "Jovian planets." The Romans named the planet after the Roman god Jupiter (also called Jove). The astronomical symbol for the planet is a styliz ...

Including:

• Jupiter - Overview
• Jupiter - Physical characteristics
• Jupiter - Planetary composition
• Jupiter - Atmosphere
• Jupiter - Planetary rings
• Jupiter - Magnetosphere
• Jupiter - Appearance
• Jupiter - Exploration of Jupiter
• Jupiter - Pioneer flyby missions
• Jupiter - Voyager flyby missions
• Jupiter - Ulysses flyby mission
• Jupiter - Galileo mission
• Jupiter - Cassini flyby mission
• Jupiter - Future probes
• Jupiter - Natural satellites
• Jupiter - Galilean moons
• Jupiter - Classification of Jupiter's moons
• Jupiter - Life on Jupiter
• Jupiter - Trojan asteroids
• Jupiter - Cometary impact
• Jupiter - Jupiter in fiction and film
• Jupiter - Jupiter and Internet conspiracists

Read more here: » Jupiter: Encyclopedia - Jupiter

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in our solar system. It is named after Mars, the Roman god of war (Ares in Greek mythology). Its name was chosen because of its red color, a feature that also earned it the nickname "The Red Planet". Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, both are small and oddly-shaped, each possibly being captured asteroids. The prefix areo- refers to Mars in the same way geo- refers to Earth—for example, areology versus geology. (Areology is also used to refer to the study of Mars as a whole rather than ju ...

Including:

• Mars - Mythology
• Mars - Physical characteristics
• Mars - Atmosphere
• Mars - Geology
• Mars - Topography
• Mars - Canals
• Mars - Ice patches
• Mars - The moons of Mars
• Mars - The exploration of Mars
• Mars - Nomenclature
• Mars - Early nomenclature
• Mars - Modern nomenclature
• Mars - Observation of Mars
• Mars - Appearance
• Mars - Martian meteorites
• Mars - Life on Mars
• Mars - The Mars flag
• Mars - Mars in fiction

Read more here: » Mars: Encyclopedia - Mars

Atmosphere is the general name for a layer of gases that may surround a material body of sufficient mass. The gases are attracted by the gravity of the body, and held fast if gravity is sufficient and the atmosphere's temperature is low. Some planets consist mainly of various gases, and thus have very deep atmospheres (see gas giant). Earth, Venus, Mars, and Pluto have atmospheres that envelop their surfaces, as do three of the satellites of the outer planets: Titan, Enceladus (moons of Saturn), and Triton (a moon of Neptune). ...

Read more here: » Celestial body atmosphere: Encyclopedia - Celestial body atmosphere

Titan is larger than the planet Mercury[6] (though less massive) and is the second largest natural satellite in the solar system after Ganymede[7]. It was originally thought to be slightly larger than Ganymede, this error was caused because there is a haze in its atmosphere which extends nearly 300 km above the surface and is almost opaqu ...

See also:

Titan moon, Titan moon - Name, Titan moon - Visibility from Earth, Titan moon - Physical characteristics, Titan moon - Atmosphere, Titan moon - Surface features, Titan moon - Exploration of Titan, Titan moon - Titan in fiction, Titan moon - Titan in literature, Titan moon - Titan in cinema and television, Titan moon - Titan in comics and anime, Titan moon - Titan in video games, Titan moon - Notes

Read more here: » Titan moon: Encyclopedia II - Titan moon - Physical characteristics

The Europan surface is relatively smooth; few features more than a few hundred metres high have been observed, but topographic relief in places approaches a kilometer. The prominent markings crisscrossing the moon seem to be mainly albedo features, which emphasize low topography. There are very few craters on Europa (there are about 20 larger than 10 km in diameter across the globe), and its albedo is one of the highest of all moons. This would seem to indicate a young and active surface; based on estimates of the frequency of cometary bomba ...

See also:

Europa moon, Europa moon - Physical characteristics, Europa moon - Surface, Europa moon - Atmosphere, Europa moon - Subsurface ocean, Europa moon - Exploration of Europa, Europa moon - Europa in popular culture

Read more here: » Europa moon: Encyclopedia II - Europa moon - Surface

Most of our knowledge of Europa comes from the flybys by the Voyager and Galileo missions. Various proposals have been made for future missions. The extremely ambitious Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter has been recently canceled. The 2006 NASA budget includes Congressional language imploring NASA to fund a mission that would orbit Europa. Such a mission would to be able confirm a subsurface ocean using gravity and altimetry measurements, elucidate the origin of surface features by imaging much of the surface at high resolution, ...

See also:

Europa moon, Europa moon - Physical characteristics, Europa moon - Surface, Europa moon - Atmosphere, Europa moon - Subsurface ocean, Europa moon - Exploration of Europa, Europa moon - Europa in popular culture

Read more here: » Europa moon: Encyclopedia II - Europa moon - Exploration of Europa

Titan is one of the most popular settings in science fiction other than Earth's Moon and the planets. Titan moon - Titan in literature. 1935: Flight on Titan, a short story by Stanley G. Weinbaum 1951: Titan is the Sol System home base of the parasitical aliens who attempt to take control of Earth in The Puppet Masters by Robert A. Heinlein. 1954: There is a novel by Alan E. Nourse, the American Science Fiction writer, that appeared in English on December 1954 called < ...

See also:

Titan moon, Titan moon - Name, Titan moon - Visibility from Earth, Titan moon - Physical characteristics, Titan moon - Atmosphere, Titan moon - Surface features, Titan moon - Exploration of Titan, Titan moon - Titan in fiction, Titan moon - Titan in literature, Titan moon - Titan in cinema and television, Titan moon - Titan in comics and anime, Titan moon - Titan in video games, Titan moon - Notes

Read more here: » Titan moon: Encyclopedia II - Titan moon - Titan in fiction

Huygens named his discovery simply Saturni Luna (Latin for "Saturn's moon", which can also be written Luna Saturni) (De Saturni Luna observatio nova, 1656; XV). Later, Giovanni Domenico Cassini named the four moons he discovered (Tethys, Dione, Rhea and Iapetus) Lodicea Sidera ("the stars of Louis") to honour king Louis XIV. Astronomers fell into the habit of referring to them as Saturn I through Saturn V. Other epithets used were the "Huygenian satellite of Saturn" (or "Huyghenian"), or th ...

See also:

Titan moon, Titan moon - Name, Titan moon - Visibility from Earth, Titan moon - Physical characteristics, Titan moon - Atmosphere, Titan moon - Surface features, Titan moon - Exploration of Titan, Titan moon - Titan in fiction, Titan moon - Titan in literature, Titan moon - Titan in cinema and television, Titan moon - Titan in comics and anime, Titan moon - Titan in video games, Titan moon - Notes

Read more here: » Titan moon: Encyclopedia II - Titan moon - Name

Little is known about Pluto because of its great distance from Earth and because no exploratory spacecraft have visited Pluto yet. The Voyager 1 probe was originally intended to visit Pluto, but due to budget cuts and lack of interest — before the discovery of Pluto's moon, size, and atmosphere — the flyby was scrapped in order to facilitate a close flyby of Saturn's moon Titan. The first spacecraft to visit Pluto will be NASA's New Horizons, a mission led by the Southwest Research Institute and ...

See also:

Pluto, Pluto - Discovery and naming, Pluto - Orbit, Pluto - Physical characteristics, Pluto - Mass and size, Pluto - Atmosphere, Pluto - Appearance, Pluto - Pluto's moons, Pluto - Charon, Pluto - The outer moons, Pluto - Exploration of Pluto, Pluto - The Pluto debate, Pluto - Planet X?, Pluto - Minor planet?, Pluto - New discoveries, Pluto - Pluto in popular culture

Read more here: » Pluto: Encyclopedia II - Pluto - Exploration of Pluto

Pluto has three known natural satellites: Charon, first identified in 1978, and two smaller, as yet unnamed moons discovered in 2005. Pluto - Charon. The Pluto-Charon system is noteworthy for being the only planet/moon system in the solar system whose barycenter lies above the planet's surface, thus prompting some astronomers to label it a double planet (a term complicated by the discovery of two more Plutonian moons). The Pluto-Charon system is also unusual among planetary systems in that they are tidally locked to each other: Charon always presents the same face to Pluto, and Pluto also a ...

See also:

Pluto, Pluto - Discovery and naming, Pluto - Orbit, Pluto - Physical characteristics, Pluto - Mass and size, Pluto - Atmosphere, Pluto - Appearance, Pluto - Pluto's moons, Pluto - Charon, Pluto - The outer moons, Pluto - Exploration of Pluto, Pluto - The Pluto debate, Pluto - Planet X?, Pluto - Minor planet?, Pluto - New discoveries, Pluto - Pluto in popular culture

Read more here: » Pluto: Encyclopedia II - Pluto - Pluto's moons

More than 75 years after its discovery, many facts about Pluto remain unknown, mainly due to the fact that it is the only planet that has not been visited by human spacecraft and that it is too far away for in-depth investigations with telescopes from earth. What is known are the few physical properties listed below. Pluto - Mass and size. Pluto is not only smaller and much less massive than every other planet, but at less than 0.2 lunar masses it is also smaller and less massive than seven moons: Ganymede ...

See also:

Pluto, Pluto - Discovery and naming, Pluto - Orbit, Pluto - Physical characteristics, Pluto - Mass and size, Pluto - Atmosphere, Pluto - Appearance, Pluto - Pluto's moons, Pluto - Charon, Pluto - The outer moons, Pluto - Exploration of Pluto, Pluto - The Pluto debate, Pluto - Planet X?, Pluto - Minor planet?, Pluto - New discoveries, Pluto - Pluto in popular culture

Read more here: » Pluto: Encyclopedia II - Pluto - Physical characteristics

Venus - Atmosphere. Venus has an atmosphere consisting mainly of carbon dioxide and a small amount of nitrogen, with a pressure at the surface about 90 times that of Earth (a pressure equivalent to a depth of 1 kilometer under Earth's oceans); its atmosphere is also roughly 90 times more massive than ours. This enormously CO2-rich atmosphere results in a strong greenhouse effect that raises the surface temperature more than 400 °C (750 °F) above what it would be otherwise, causing temperatu ...

See also:

Venus, Venus - Physical characteristics, Venus - Atmosphere, Venus - Surface features, Venus - Venus' moon, Venus - Aspects, Venus - Observations and explorations of Venus, Venus - Lowest distances to earth, Venus - Cultural references

Read more here: » Venus: Encyclopedia II - Venus - Physical characteristics

Pluto - Planet X?. The planet Pluto was originally discovered in 1930 in the course of a search for a body sufficiently massive to account for supposed anomalies in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune . Once it was found, its faintness and failure to show a visible disc cast doubt on the idea that it could be Lowell's Planet X. Lowell had made a prediction of Pluto's position in 1915 which had turned out to be fairly close to its actual position at that time; however Ernest W. Brown concluded almost immediately that ...

See also:

Pluto, Pluto - Discovery and naming, Pluto - Orbit, Pluto - Physical characteristics, Pluto - Mass and size, Pluto - Atmosphere, Pluto - Appearance, Pluto - Pluto's moons, Pluto - Charon, Pluto - The outer moons, Pluto - Exploration of Pluto, Pluto - The Pluto debate, Pluto - Planet X?, Pluto - Minor planet?, Pluto - New discoveries, Pluto - Pluto in popular culture

Read more here: » Pluto: Encyclopedia II - Pluto - The Pluto debate

Pluto was discovered by the astronomer Clyde Tombaugh at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona on February 18, 1930 after an extensive search when he compared photographic plates taken on January 23 and 29. After the observatory obtained confirming photographs, the news of the discovery was telegraphed to the Harvard College Observatory on March 13, 1930. The planet was later found on photographs dating back to March 19, 1915. Tombaugh was searching for a "Planet X" to explain discrepancies in the predicted orbit of Neptune. It is now known these discrepancies were an artifact of the slightly incorre ...

See also:

Pluto, Pluto - Discovery and naming, Pluto - Orbit, Pluto - Physical characteristics, Pluto - Mass and size, Pluto - Atmosphere, Pluto - Appearance, Pluto - Pluto's moons, Pluto - Charon, Pluto - The outer moons, Pluto - Exploration of Pluto, Pluto - The Pluto debate, Pluto - Planet X?, Pluto - Minor planet?, Pluto - New discoveries, Pluto - Pluto in popular culture

Read more here: » Pluto: Encyclopedia II - Pluto - Discovery and naming