Sentences with phrase «small moon»

But the discovery of so many small moons changes this.

The end result: one big moon alone in an orbital space once occupied by several smaller moons.

As astronomers discover increasingly smaller moons, they will have to address the question of what exactly qualifies as a moon.

For the most part, these planets have several small moons, all orbiting in the same direction as the planet spins.

Sen — One of the overarching goals of extrasolar planet detection is to find out if other planetary systems look like our own Solar System, complete with small rocky planets, large gas giant planets, and hundreds of small moons.

Capture of further small moons into prograde orbits becomes more probable in the presence of a large moon in retrograde orbit, so some of Neptune's outer moons may have been captured after Triton.

Four large moons and numerous smaller moons orbit the planet.

«It's likely that small moons formed through the process could cross orbits, collide and merge,» said lead author Prof. Rufo.

The end result is a neatly ordered satellite system, with small moons on the inside built from few moonlets and large moons farther out built from numerous moonlets.

Further out in the solar system there are tiny asteroids being orbited by even smaller moons.

Asteroids, comets and meteoroids are even smaller, ranging in size from small moons to large rocks.

In between, Saturn has at least 30 other smaller moons, some smooth, some battered, some strangely mottled.

Two further small moons, Nix and Hydra, were found by Hubble in 2005.

In 1979, he and Peter Goldreich predicted that the rings of Uranus (discovered in 1977) are kept in place by small moons that have not yet been detected.

Pluto is now known to have two much smaller moons, discovered in 2005 by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Titan is the only Solar System moon thought to have liquid at its surface, although Lebreton says oceans may lie beneath crusts of ice on Jupiter's moons Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, and even on Saturn's small moon Enceladus.

Asteroids have a wide range of sizes, from about the size of a car to objects resembling small moons hundreds of miles across.

In addition to two recently discovered small moons, Pluto has a moon, Charon, that is roughly half it's size, with about an eighth of its mass (more).

The fly - by offered astronomers a chance to take detailed images of the space rock, and the first radar glimpse revealed that 1998 QE2 has its own small moon.

The next smaller moon, Dione, takes center stage with its telltale ice cliffs visible as wisps on its surface.

By guiding tiny particles around themselves, small moons embedded in Saturn's rings create the propeller - like features seen here.

Moreover, the image reveals that Kerberos is double - lobed, which suggests the satellite may have formed when two even smaller moons merged.

Dust rings encircling Pluto, or small moons shedding unseen debris, could endanger the $ 700 - million mission.

«So, as well as the rings, it's likely that Chariklo has at least one small moon still waiting to be discovered,» adds Felipe Braga Ribas.

Only the two most distant small moons, Phobos and Deimos, remained.

He expects to find small moons inside or between the rings; according to his model, those bodies should be balls of rubble, not solid objects.

There is no question who is leading this dance: The relatively small moons are no match for Jupiter's enormous girth.

The wobbles of one of Saturn's smallest moons hint at something unusual beneath the surface — perhaps an ocean.

Photographs taken this week by NASA's Cassini spacecraft provide a closer view of Saturn's small moon Pan, which resembles ravioli.

The discovery of so many small moons means New Horizons could be in for a hairy ride.

Mars has two very small moons, Phobos and Demos, which are named for the horses that pulled the Roman god's chariot.

Jupiter's small moon Io is volcanically active due to tidal stresses, and as a result sulfur deposits have accumulated on the surface.

Large dust storms frequently occur on Mars, and two, small moons named Phobos and Deimos orbit the planet [source: NASA].

Sophisticated computer modeling indicates Mars» two small moons likely formed as the result of a relatively modest - size impactor, not a much larger body as previously theorized.

Although traveling at great speed, the Cassini spacecraft managed to capture this close view of Saturn's small moon Helene during a flyby on March 3, 2010.

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First, Cliff Bleszinski, he of Unreal Tournament, Gears of War and now Lawbreakers, went wild, adding a second tower to Ancel's moon plus some eyes along with a second smaller moon.

Now, new research in the journal Nature Geoscience suggests that an ancient collision could have sent a ring of debris containing at least 100 small moons into orbit around the Red Planet, which eventually coalesced into Phobos and Deimos — Mars's two current moons.

Four smaller moons orbit this pair.

Gravitational forces or subsequent collisions could have fragmented each chunk into a family of small moons.

Things such as weather - related and seasonal variations in atmospheric activity, and chaotic interactions between rings and small moons on decadal time - scales.

«Once again, the Pluto system has surprised us,» said New Horizons Project Scientist Hal Weaver, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. «Our predictions were nearly spot - on for the other small moons, but not for Kerberos,» added New Horizons co-investigator Mark Showalter, of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif..

Pluto and its largest moon Charon are already tidally locked, as well as many small moons of the giant planets in Earth's solar system.

Saturn's much smaller moon, Enceladus, features a network of icy volcanoes spewing ammonia, formaldehyde, and other organic molecules.

One major question about Phobos and Mars» even smaller moon, Deimos, is whether they are captured asteroids or bits of Mars knocked into the sky by impacts.

Saturn's small moon Enceladus — just 300 miles wide — turned in one of the biggest discoveries from NASA's Cassini probe, now orbiting the ringed planet.

Titan may have gotten so large through the merging of several smaller moons.

Already, Meech says, its glow is diminishing to the equivalent of one of Pluto's small moons as seen from Earth.