Permission for re-distribution can be obtained by contacting our office. Please also feel free to pass this activity on to other teachers, but only in its entirety. All are welcome to download, print, and copy this activity. This activity was developed by the staff of the MMSD Planetarium. Timeline of discoveries of planets and moons (natural satellites).The Jupiter Satellite page (it's our favorite source). Links for up-to-date information on moons (natural satellites): Summary for 2002: 11 more moons for Jupiter 1 more moon for Uranus.Summary for 2003: 21 more moons for Jupiter 1 more moon for Saturn 3 more moons for Neptune.Summary for 2004: 2 more moons discovered for Jupiter 2 more moons discovered for Saturn 6 more moons for Uranus, and 2 more moons for Neptune.Summary for 2005: 14 more moons discovered for Saturn 2 more moons discovered for Uranus and 2 more moons discovered for Pluto.Summary for 2006: 9 more moons discovered for Saturn removed 2 moons that were previously thought to be new moons for Uranus (they appear to be previously known moons).Summary for 2007: 4 more moons for Saturn 3 discovered using the Subaru telescope, and another using the Cassini spacecraft.Ma1 more moon for Saturn, discovered using the Cassini spacecraft.J1 more moon for Saturn, discovered using the Cassini spacecraft.J2 more moons for Jupiter, discovered in 2010 using the Hale Telescope and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope.J1 more moon for the dwarf planet Pluto, discovered using the Hubble Space Telescope.Febru2 more moons for Jupiter, discovered in 2011 using the Las Campanas Observatory.Septem1 more moon for Pluto, discovered this summer using the Hubble Space Telescope.J1 more moon for Neptune, discovered using the Hubble Space Telescope.Ma1 more moon for Jupiter, discovered using the Las Campanas Observatory.Ma1 more moon for Jupiter, discovered using the Cerro Tololo Inter-american Observatory.J10 more moons for Jupiter, discovered using the 6.5-meter Magellan Telescopes.Octo20 more moons for Saturn, discovered using the Subaru telescope.July, 2021 1 more moon for Jupiter, discovered using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope.Links to great sources of information about moons (natural satellites) in the solar system below. However these numbers are the generally accepted ones. We will update them as new moons are found. If you want to be safe, you can call them all natural satellites, but it's still okay to call them moons. So how small can these objects be and still be called a "moon"? There is no clear answer, because there is no clean cut-off for the size an object has to be in order to be called a moon. Now they are detecting these objects down to only a couple of kilometers in diameter. Teachers, are you having trouble keeping track of the number of moons for each planet? With improvements in technology, discoveries of more and more of the smaller moons have been coming in. The Planets as seen in natural or true colors The information there provides a good explanation for color in most of these cameras. The Hubble Space Telescope web site has a nice tutorial on the Meaning of Color in Hubble images. The photos below are the best I could find as representatives of what the planet would look like if we were looking out the window of a space craft as it passed by the planet. Since I was unable to find a good web page to send teachers to, I've created this one. The challenge for teachers is increased by the abundance of images now available on the Internet. It's especially difficult to do with the special, sensitive "black & white" (gray-scale) cameras on most telescopes, satellites, and space probes. It's actually quite difficult to reproduce in a photograph the way we see things with our eyes. Or they use colors of light that our eyes can't detect and produce representative color images using colors we can see. Many times scientists enhance the colors, or contrast of an image to draw out more detail. They've noticed that each planet's appearance can vary greatly in photographs, and that many of the photographs are labeled as a "false-color" view. Several teachers and students have asked what the planets look like in "true" or "natural" colors.
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