The solar system is home to over 200 known moons, and they’re weirder, wilder, and more diverse than most people imagine. From volcanic eruptions to subsurface oceans, here are 25 facts that will blow your mind:
- Ganymede, Jupiter’s largest moon, is bigger than Mercury.
- Titan has lakes and rivers of liquid methane and ethane.
- Io, another Jovian moon, has over 400 active volcanoes—more than any object in the solar system.
- Europa has a subsurface ocean that may contain twice the water of Earth’s oceans.
- Our Moon is gradually drifting away from Earth at 3.8 cm per year.
- Pluto’s moon Charon is so large it makes Pluto wobble—they’re more like a binary system.
- Enceladus sprays icy geysers into space, which feed Saturn’s E ring.
- Callisto has one of the oldest surfaces in the solar system—unchanged for 4 billion years.
- Triton, Neptune’s moon, orbits backwards and may be a captured Kuiper Belt object.
- Deimos and Phobos, Mars’ tiny moons, may be captured asteroids.
- Some moons may have formed from giant impacts—like Earth’s Moon and Charon.
- Mimas looks like the Death Star due to its massive Herschel crater.
- Several moons experience tidal heating, generating internal warmth despite being far from the Sun.
- Scientists suspect that microbial life could exist under Europa’s icy crust.
- Saturn has over 100 moons, many still unnamed or provisional.
- Hyperion tumbles chaotically—its rotation is unpredictable.
- Earth is the only planet in the inner solar system with a large, stable moon.
- Pan, one of Saturn’s moons, looks like a flying saucer due to its equatorial ridge.
- Haumea’s moons orbit a football-shaped dwarf planet with a 4-hour day.
- Rhea may have its own ring system.
- Iapetus has one dark hemisphere and one light—its surface is two-toned.
- Amalthea, a tiny moon of Jupiter, has an irregular, potato-like shape.
- Lunar eclipses occur when Earth casts a shadow on its Moon—perfect cosmic alignment.
- NASA’s Artemis missions plan to put humans back on the Moon by the mid-2020s.
- The Moon’s far side wasn’t seen until 1959, when Luna 3 photographed it.
The next time you look up at the Moon, remember: it’s just one of many—and we’re only beginning to explore them.
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