Question

How many moons are there in our solar system larger than Pluto?

Answer 1

Hint: A moon is defined to be a celestial body that makes an orbit around a planet, including the eight major planets, dwarf planets, and minor planets.

Complete answer:
A moon may be referred to as a natural satellite, although to differentiate it from other astronomical bodies orbiting another body, e.g., a planet orbiting a star, the term moon is used exclusively to refer to a planet’s natural satellite.

The moon count had a total of just one in the olden times, that number has increased to 336 as of July 2009, with 168 moons orbiting the six planets, while the rest are moons of dwarf planets, asteroids moons, and natural satellites of Trans-Neptunian objects.

Pluto is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It was the first and the largest Kuiper belt object to be discovered. After Pluto was discovered in 1930 it was declared to be the ninth planet from the Sun. The radius of Pluto is 1,188.3km.

There are seven moons in our Solar System, including our own Moon, that are larger than Pluto.
- Ganymede (Jupiter)
- Titan (Saturn)
- Calisto (Jupiter)
- Io (Jupiter)
- Moon (Earth)
- Europa (Jupiter)
- Triton (Neptune)

Hence, There are seven moons in our Solar System that are larger than Pluto.

Note:
- The four listed moons of Jupiter, discovered by Galileo in 1610 and the first known other than our Moon, are called the "Galilean moons".
- There are hundreds of moons in our solar system - even a few asteroids have been found to have small companion moons.