Saturn has 83 known moons, the most of any planet in our Solar System. This size comparison video from MetaBallStudios lines them all up, with London as the background. The same YouTuber recently created a similar video showing the moons of Jupiter, and it’s hard to compare the two. Saturn’s moon size escalates much more quickly, with only one having a diameter of less than one mile. There are also notably fewer potato-shaped moons around Saturn, though there are a few that look more like giant eggs.
The largest of all Saturn’s moons is Titan. At more than 3,000 miles across, it’s much bigger than our own Moon. Another notable moon is Mimas, which looks a lot like the Death Star. According to the video, it is about 250 miles in diameter. While there’s nothing definitive, the size of the space station is estimated to be only about 100 miles across. These are just a few among the 83 moons of Saturn. And, as the video’s description points out, there are even more minor moons. It also doesn’t include all of the debris that makes up Saturn’s massive rings, most of which is very small. It would be a much longer video if the billions of ice crystals and chunks of asteroids counted as moons.
The video zooms out across all of Europe and eventually the globe in order to accommodate the massive size difference among all of Saturn’s moons. And in a new trick we hope to see in more MetaBallStudios YouTube videos, it also pans back in and looks up from the perspective of a person on the streets of London. Looking up at this collection of moons from the Tower Bridge over the river Thames is definitely something we can see making its way into a disaster movie.
Saturn is one of the most photogenic planets and also the focus of plenty of scientific research. One of its moons in particular, Enceladus, may be home to microbial life.
Melissa is Nerdist’s science & technology staff writer. She also moderates “science of” panels at conventions and co-hosts Star Warsologies, a podcast about science and Star Wars. Follow her on Twitter @melissatruth.
