Size Comparison

I love seeing the actual sizes of planets and moons in our solar system compared side-by-side to each other. Maybe that's just one of those really nerdy things about myself, nonetheless, it is there.

So, here is a cool image that shows the size comparisons of Mars, Ganymede, Mercury, and The Moon. Now, in case you are wondering (and I know you are), "What is Ganymede?" Ganymede is the largest moon in our solar system and it orbits Jupiter. Everything is bigger at Jupiter. Ganymede is actually bigger than the planet Mercury and almost as big as Mars! And if you also happened to be wondering, the only other moon larger than Mercury is Saturn's moon Titan.


Mars' diameter is 4222 miles
Ganymede's diameter is 3270 miles
Mercury's diameter is 3033 miles
The Moon's diameter is 2160 miles

Now, the official name of The Moon really is The Moon. Weird right? I mean all the other moons in the solar system have names like Ganymede, Callisto, Titan, Ariel, etc. But our moon is just called The Moon. Wow...really? So that leaves us with no other option than to refer to ancient mythologies for names for the Moon. The Romans called it Luna and the Greeks called it Selene.

Since there's so much talk about the Moon, here's an image to the right of the side you never get to see *yawn* Yeah, our side is much more interesting.

Anyway, Selene sounds too girly, unless you're into the whole "mother" earth thing. I prefer to call it Luna (or Lua in Portuguese). Besides, most of the planets are named after Roman gods anyways.