In remote sensing, an image mosaic or photo mosaic is a compound image or photograph created by stitching together a series of adjacent aerial pictures or satellite images of the Earth. Space scientists have been assembling mosaics of this kind since at least as early as the Soviet satellite missions to the Moon in the late 1950s. [1]
Umbriel is a moon of Uranus discovered on October 24, 1851, by William Lassell. It was discovered at the same time as Ariel and named after a character in Alexander Pope's 1712 poem The Rape of the Lock. Umbriel consists mainly of ice with a substantial fraction of rock, and may be differentiated into a rocky core and an icy mantle. The surface is the darkest among Uranian moons, and appears to have been shaped primarily by impacts. However, the presence of canyons suggests early endogenic processes, and the moon may have undergone an early endogenically driven resurfacing event that obliterated its older surface.
A natural satellite is, in the most common usage, an astronomical body that orbits a planet, dwarf planet, or small Solar System body. Natural satellites are colloquially referred to as moons, a derivation from the Moon of Earth.
Rhea is the second-largest moon of Saturn and the ninth-largest moon in the Solar System, with a surface area that is comparable to the area of Australia. It is the smallest body in the Solar System for which precise measurements have confirmed a shape consistent with hydrostatic equilibrium. It was discovered in 1672 by Giovanni Domenico Cassini.
Oberon, also designated Uranus IV, is the outermost major moon of the planet Uranus. It is the second-largest, with a surface area that is comparable to the area of Australia, and second most massive of the Uranian moons, and the ninth most massive moon in the Solar System. Discovered by William Herschel in 1787, Oberon is named after the mythical king of the fairies who appears as a character in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Its orbit lies partially outside Uranus's magnetosphere.
Pan is the innermost named moon of Saturn. It is a small, walnut-shaped moon approximately 35 kilometres across and 23 km wide that orbits within the Encke Gap in Saturn's A Ring. Pan is a ring shepherd and is responsible for keeping the Encke Gap free of ring particles. It is sometimes described as having the appearance of a ravioli.
The Lunar Orbiter program was a series of five uncrewed lunar orbiter missions launched by the United States from 1966 through 1967. Intended to help select Apollo landing sites by mapping the Moon's surface, they provided the first photographs from lunar orbit and photographed both the Moon and Earth.
Epimetheus is an inner satellite of Saturn. It is also known as Saturn XI. It is named after the mythological Epimetheus, brother of Prometheus.
A minor-planet moon is an astronomical object that orbits a minor planet as its natural satellite. As of January 2022, there are 457 minor planets known or suspected to have moons. Discoveries of minor-planet moons are important because the determination of their orbits provides estimates on the mass and density of the primary, allowing insights into their physical properties that are generally not otherwise accessible.
Phoebe is the most massive irregular satellite of Saturn with a mean diameter of 213 km (132 mi). It was discovered by William Henry Pickering on 18 March 1899 from photographic plates that had been taken starting on 16 August 1898 at the Boyden Station of the Carmen Alto Observatory near Arequipa, Peru, by DeLisle Stewart. It was the first satellite to be discovered photographically.
Titania, also designated Uranus III, is the largest of the moons of Uranus and the eighth largest moon in the Solar System at a diameter of 1,578 kilometres (981 mi), with a surface area comparable to that of Australia. Discovered by William Herschel in 1787, it is named after the queen of the fairies in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Its orbit lies inside Uranus's magnetosphere.
The Blue Marble is a photograph of Earth taken on December 7, 1972, from a distance of around 29,400 kilometers from the planet's surface. Taken by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft on its way to the Moon, it is one of the most reproduced images in history.
The moons of Saturn are numerous and diverse, ranging from tiny moonlets only tens of meters across to the enormous Titan, which is larger than the planet Mercury. There are 146 moons with confirmed orbits. This number does not include the many thousands of moonlets embedded within Saturn's dense rings, nor hundreds of possible kilometer-sized distant moons that were seen through telescopes but not recaptured. Seven Saturnian moons are large enough to have collapsed into a relaxed, ellipsoidal shape, though only one or two of those, Titan and possibly Rhea, are currently in hydrostatic equilibrium. Three moons are particularly notable. Titan is the second-largest moon in the Solar System, with a nitrogen-rich Earth-like atmosphere and a landscape featuring river networks and hydrocarbon lakes. Enceladus emits jets of ice from its south-polar region and is covered in a deep layer of snow. Iapetus has contrasting black and white hemispheres as well as an extensive ridge of equatorial mountains among the tallest in the solar system.
The planet Neptune has 14 known moons, which are named for minor water deities in Greek mythology. By far the largest of them is Triton, discovered by William Lassell on October 10, 1846, 17 days after the discovery of Neptune itself. Over a century passed before the discovery of the second natural satellite, Nereid, in 1949, and another 40 years passed before Proteus, Neptune's second largest moon, was discovered in 1989. Neptune's outermost moon Neso, which has an orbital period of about 27 Julian years, orbits farther from its planet than any other moon in the Solar System.
Polydeuces, also designated Saturn XXXIV, is a small trojan moon of Saturn occupying the trailing L5 Lagrange point of Dione. It was discovered by the Cassini Imaging Science Team in images taken by the Cassini space probe on 21 October 2004. With a mean diameter of about 3 km (1.9 mi), Polydeuces is thought to have a smooth surface coated with fine, icy particles accumulated from the cryovolcanic plumes of Enceladus. In its orbit around Saturn, Polydeuces periodically drifts away from Dione's Lagrange point due to gravitational perturbations by other nearby moons of Saturn. Of the four known trojan moons of Saturn, Polydeuces exhibits the largest displacement from its Lagrange point.
Nix is a natural satellite of Pluto, with a diameter of 49.8 km (30.9 mi) across its longest dimension. It was discovered along with Pluto's outermost moon Hydra on 15 May 2005 by astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope, and was named after Nyx, the Greek goddess of the night. Nix is the third moon of Pluto by distance, orbiting between the moons Styx and Kerberos.
Hydra is a natural satellite of Pluto, with a diameter of approximately 51 km (32 mi) across its longest dimension. It is the second-largest moon of Pluto, being slightly larger than Nix. Hydra was discovered along with Nix by astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope on 15 May 2005, and was named after the Hydra, the nine-headed underworld serpent in Greek mythology. By distance, Hydra is the fifth and outermost moon of Pluto, orbiting beyond Pluto's fourth moon Kerberos.
The dwarf planet Pluto has five natural satellites. In order of distance from Pluto, they are Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra. Charon, the largest, is mutually tidally locked with Pluto, and is massive enough that Pluto–Charon is sometimes considered a double dwarf planet.
The Solar System Family Portrait is an image of many of the Solar System's planets and moons acquired by MESSENGER during November 2010 from approximately the orbit of Mercury. The mosaic is intended to be complementary to the Voyager 1's Family Portrait acquired from the outer edge of the Solar System on February 14, 1990.
The Day the Earth Smiled is a composite photograph taken by the NASA spacecraft Cassini on July 19, 2013. During an eclipse of the Sun, the spacecraft turned to image Saturn and most of its visible ring system, as well as Earth and the Moon as distant pale dots. The spacecraft had twice taken similar photographs in its previous nine years in orbit around the planet. The name also refers to the activities associated with the event, as well as to the photographic mosaic created from it.
Photography and other imagery of planet Earth from outer space started in the 1940s, first from rockets in suborbital flight, subsequently from satellites around Earth, and then from spacecraft beyond Earth's orbit.
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