![]() ![]() It is the most heavily cratered world known in the Solar System, thought to have the oldest surface of all. It has the lowest density and surface gravity of any of the Galilean satellites.Īlthough it's tidally locked to Jupiter, with the same face always facing its jovian parent, its surface appears to be extremely old. The most distant of the four Galilean moons around Jupiter, Callisto receives very little tidal heating at this great distance, and isn't locked into the same resonant orbits as Io, Europa, and Ganymede. T NASA/JPL/DLR(German Aerospace Center)ģ.) Callisto: The oldest and most heavily-cratered moon in the Solar System, Mercury-sized Callisto is the largest moon to show very few properties of what we'd call "differentiation" between its layers. this image of Callisto from NASA's Galileo spacecraft. In many ways, of all the moons we know of, it's the one most like the other rocky planets of the Solar System.īright scars on a darker surface testify to a long history of impacts on Jupiter's moon Callisto in. The Huygens lander discovered methane lakes and even waterfalls on Titan's surface, while Cassini's infrared imager was able to map Titan's surface through the clouds. The surface pressure allows for the presence of liquids there, most prominently methane. It forms seasonal clouds and weather patterns at its poles, above the methane hazes that dominate its atmosphere. Titan's atmosphere is the richest of any moon in the Solar System, with an atmospheric pressure at its surface greater than even that of Earth. Titan also surpasses Mercury in size, but has little else in common with virtually airless Ganymede. NASA/JPL/Space Science InstituteĢ.) Titan: Saturn's enormous satellite gives Ganymede a run for its money as the largest non-planet of all. A composite of ultraviolet, optical, and infrared light was used to construct this view. surface features beneath the clouds displayed. In this image of Titan, the methane haze and atmosphere is shown in a near-transparent blue, with. Observations suggest it has an underground ocean beneath the surface, possibly containing even more water than planet Earth possesses. Its atmosphere is almost non-existent: 100 billion times thinner than Earth's, made almost exclusively of oxygen and hydrogen compounds arising from vaporized ices. Still, it has an iron core that generates its own magnetic field, which dominates very close to the surface even over the enormous magnetic field of nearby parent planet Jupiter. At just 45% the mass of Mercury, it has an asteroid-like density rather than a density comparable to the terrestrial planets. With a diameter of 5,268 km (3,271 miles), it's 8% bigger than the planet Mercury, although it has less than half the mass of our Solar System's innermost planet, being made of mostly ices and silicate minerals. NASA/JPL (edited by Wikimedia Commons user PlanetUser)ġ.) Ganymede: Jupiter's largest moon is the largest non-planet in the Solar System. An underground ocean may contain more water than all of Earth combined. has water-ice on its poles down to about 40° latitude, and a thin atmosphere of oxygen and hydrogen atoms, likely made from the vaporized ices. This natural color image of Ganymede's anti-Jupiter hemisphere comes from the Galileo spacecraft. ![]()
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