If the planets can be called
“children of the Sun”(this by no means means that they
have derived from it), then their satellites can with equal reason
be called “grandchildren”.
These are
comparatively smaller, colder hard bodies which rotate around the
planets. There are 33 of them altogether. Two of them are even
bigger than the smallest planet Mercury: the satellite of Jupiter
Ganymede (diameter 5 000 km) and the satellite of Saturn Titan
(diameter 4859 km). The atmosphere of these satellites and of
Triton (a satellite of Neptune) consists mainly of the poison gases
methane and ammonia. After that in size comes the size of Jupiter
Kalisto, our satellite the Moon and then the two other satellites
of Jupiter- Jo and Europe (with diameters of 3470 and 3100 km). The
rest are smaller and have diameters of 1500, 1000, hundreds or some
tens of kilometers. The smallest satellite in the Solar System is
Fobos with a diameter of 8 km. It is a real dwarf compared to the
satellite of Jupiter Ganymede.
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