Haunted Places On The Eastern Shore

is the moon so big? Latest

is common to find book reviews as "the moon is compared to Earth, very big."

Earth and the Moon photographed from Mars by the Mars Global Surveyor. Shows the actual sizes of both.

In fact, if you look at books in the 80's, when Pluto was not even classified as "dwarf planet", and the less they know their actual size, it was said that a percentage of the diameter of our Moon was the largest in the Solar System compared to Earth.

often even be said that the Earth is a double planet.

it really that big comparatively?


If you look below the table and the graph shows the percentage diameter larger satellite with respect to their planet.

Note that the Earth and Pluto outweigh the percentage of the other planets.

Consider one by one.

Mercury and Venus:
not have satellites. It is likely that in both cases, if you had it, the attraction of the sun's been removed because they are closest to our star. The

Earth, Mars and Pluto are special cases.

The origin of our moon is different from the other planets, notably the giant of the Solar System. The

Mars are very small and are probably captured asteroids.

now know that Pluto is a special case, since it belongs to the family of dwarf planets. " Several satellites appear to be big for them.

And the giant planets?

There seems to be in the solar system (including the Sun-Jupiter system and some asteroids known), a ratio greater than 10%.

The origin of satellites of the giant planets was similar to the Solar System's formation , by a process of accretion.

This makes the average diameter of the satellites about their planet is in the order of 5% of the diameter of the planet.

This is not to take it as a law, just looking at the numbers I realized this done.

Moon as seen now, left as it would if it were 5% of the size, right.

If the moon was in the relationship size of the giant planets, would not exceed 600 kilometers in diameter!