Curated playlist
Moons with a prograde orbit
- Polydeuces (moon)Saturn's moon Polydeuces is craterless because ice from Enceladus keeps burying its craters.
- Calypso (moon)Saturn's moon Calypso reflects more light than a perfect mirror would be expected to.
- Adrastea (moon)Adrastea, a small moon of Jupiter, was the first moon found in spacecraft photos. Voyager 2 caught it in 1979.
- Dione (moon)Dione, a moon of Saturn, has ice cliffs that Voyager 1 photographed as wisps in 1980.
- Telesto (moon)Telesto, a small moon of Saturn, appears largely free of small impact craters. Cassini surprised scientists in 2005.
- Ariel (moon)Ariel, a small moon of Uranus, is cut by canyons hundreds of kilometers long. Voyager 2 photographed it in 1986.
- Tethys (moon)Saturn's moon Tethys is less dense than water. It is made of almost nothing but water ice.
- Ganymede (moon)Hubble confirmed a hidden ocean on Ganymede, Jupiter's largest moon, by watching its auroras shift.
- Io (moon)Jupiter's moon Io has over 400 active volcanoes, more than any other object in the Solar System.
- Titan (moon)On Titan, Saturn's largest moon, it rains methane instead of water. Its rivers and seas are liquid methane too.
- Galilean moonsGalileo first mistook Jupiter's moons for fixed stars. By January 15, 1610, he knew they orbited the planet.
- Helene (moon)Helene, a small moon of Saturn, stays ahead of the much larger moon Dione. Only four known moons hold such a spot.
- Europa (moon)Europa, a moon of Jupiter, is the smoothest solid object known in the Solar System.
- Miranda (moon)Miranda, a small moon of Uranus, looked so strange in 1986 that scientists had under 24 hours to explain it.
- MimasSaturn's moon Mimas may hide a liquid ocean under its ice. Its surface shows no cracks to give it away.
- Titania (moon)Titania, a moon of Uranus, has never had its northern half photographed. Voyager 2 saw it only in southern summer.
- UmbrielUmbriel, a moon of Uranus, has one bright ring on a very dark surface. The ring glows on the floor of Wunda crater.
- Proteus (moon)Neptune's moon Proteus went unnoticed for decades because planet glare hid it. Voyager 2 finally revealed it in 1989.
- Callisto (moon)Callisto, a moon of Jupiter, has the most heavily cratered surface in the Solar System. It has no volcanoes.
- Hyperion (moon)Saturn's moon Hyperion looks like a giant sponge because about forty percent of it is empty space.
- Styx (moon)William Shatner's pick, Vulcan, won the vote to name a Pluto moon. Astronomers rejected it, so Styx got the name.
- Oberon (moon)Oberon, a moon of Uranus, has only been photographed up close once. Voyager 2 imaged roughly 40% of it in January 1986.
- Rhea (moon)In 2008, NASA said Saturn's moon Rhea might have rings, but Cassini looked and found nothing.
- Metis (moon)Metis, a small moon of Jupiter, survives where tides should tear it apart. Its rocky strength holds it together.
- Nix (moon)Nix, a tiny moon of Pluto, can occasionally flip its entire axis. Its elongated shape feeds the chaotic tumbling.
- Phobos (moon)Phobos, a moon of Mars, rises in the west and sets in the east. It circles the planet in 7 hours and 39 minutes.
- EnceladusEnceladus, a small moon of Saturn, shoots water into space from more than 100 geysers. The moon is barely 500 km across.
- Deimos (moon)Two craters on Deimos honor writers who guessed Mars had two moons. Jonathan Swift and Voltaire were named in 1973.
- Iapetus (moon)Saturn's moon Iapetus vanished from Cassini's telescope in 1672. It was bright on one side and dark on the other.
- Hydra (moon)Pluto's moon Hydra tumbles sideways through space. Its axis was tilted roughly 110 degrees in July 2015.
- Thebe (moon)Thebe, also known as Jupiter XIV, is the fourth moon outward from the giant planet Jupiter. On the 1st of May 2026, the Juno spacecraft photographed it from only 5,000 kilometres away. That sharp image is a long way from the moon's first…
- Charon (moon)In 1978, astronomer James Christy noticed Pluto looked stretched, and found its moon Charon.
- MoonThe Moon is drifting away from Earth by 38 millimeters every year. That is about the rate human fingernails grow.
- Amalthea (moon)Amalthea was the last moon anyone found by looking through an eyepiece. An astronomer spotted it at Jupiter in 1892.