The Weirdest Moons In Our Solar System 

By Raza Mehdi

March 28, 2022

Enceladus – An Exciting Possibility

Enceladus is Saturn’s sixth-largest moon. It also hides an important secret – an earth-sized ocean of water! It has become a promising lead in the search for extraterrestrial life.

Image source: NASA

Callisto – The Pin Cushion 

Bright scars on a darker surface shows a long history of impacts on Jupiter's moon – Callisto. The moon consists of about 60% rocks and 40% various types of ice.

Image source: NASA

Lapetus - A Tale of Two Faces

What makes Saturn’s Lapetus so weird are its two sides. While one side is bright, the other side is one of the darkest surfaces in the entire Solar System!

Image source: NASA

Lo – A Fiery Symbol

Jupiter’s moon Lo is the Solar System’s most volcanically active body. Its volcanoes spew magma hundreds of kilometres above the surface. In 1997, a NASA spacecraft caught a massive volcanic eruption on the moon (which you can see as the blue swell in the image).

Image source: NASA

Titan – An Earth-like Wonder

Of Saturn’s 53 known moons, Titan is the largest. It’s also the only moon that has a cloud system and a dense atmosphere like that of the Earth.

Image source: NASA

Hyperion – The  Space Sponge

Hyperion's strange surface resembles a sponge with deep, dark pits. One theory to explain the look of this Saturn moon is that it's the surviving remnant of another larger moon that once orbited the gas giant.

Image source: NASA

Pan – The Ring Shepherd

This saucer-shaped moon is one of Saturn’s many shepherd moons. Shepherd moons get this name because they help keep the famous rings of Saturn in line.

Image source: NASA

The strangest feature of Mars’ Phobos is the Stickney crater, which is 9.7 km wide. Phobos has a catastrophic future ahead – it will collide with Mars in 50 million years.

Image source: NASA

Phobos – On Collision Course

Europa – The Blood Moon 

Jupiter's moon Europa looks bizarre! The moon is scarred by deep red gashes, like the red veins in the human eye, but they are actually just cracks and ridges.

Image source: NASA

Moon – Our Very Own

No list of interesting moons would be complete without the original wonder of the night sky, our Moon. It remains the only place outside Earth where humans have set foot.

Image source: NASA