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There are at least 19 natural satellites in the Solar System that are known to be massive enough to be close to hydrostatic equilibrium: seven of Saturn, five of Uranus, four of Jupiter, and one each of Earth, Neptune, and Pluto. Alan Stern calls these satellite planets, although the term major moon is more common.
The table below shows comparative gravitational accelerations at the surface of the Sun, the Earth's moon, each of the planets in the Solar System and their major moons, Ceres, Pluto, and Eris. For gaseous bodies, the "surface" is taken to mean visible surface: the cloud tops of the giant planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune), and the ...
The publication of the law has become known as the "first great unification", as it marked the unification of the previously described phenomena of gravity on Earth with known astronomical behaviors. [1] [2] [3] This is a general physical law derived from empirical observations by what Isaac Newton called inductive reasoning. [4]
Gravitation, also known as gravitational attraction, is the mutual attraction between all masses in the universe.Gravity is the gravitational attraction at the surface of a planet or other celestial body; [6] gravity may also include, in addition to gravitation, the centrifugal force resulting from the planet's rotation (see § Earth's gravity).
In addition to orbits around Lagrange points, the rich dynamics that arise from the gravitational pull of more than one mass yield interesting trajectories, also known as low energy transfers. [4] For example, the gravity environment of the Sun–Earth–Moon system allows spacecraft to travel great distances on very little fuel, [ citation ...
In tightly packed planetary systems, the gravitational pull of the planets among themselves causes one planet to accelerate and another planet to decelerate along its orbit. The acceleration causes the orbital period of each planet to change. Detecting this effect by measuring the change is known as transit-timing variations.
Large-scale gravity anomalies can be detected from space, as a by-product of satellite gravity missions, e.g., GOCE. These satellite missions aim at the recovery of a detailed gravity field model of the Earth, typically presented in the form of a spherical-harmonic expansion of the Earth's gravitational potential, but alternative presentations ...
The gravitational potential, , of a system is related to the acceleration and the gravitational field, by: = = (), = = ‖ ‖, whereas the potential is related to a (smoothened) mass density, , via the Poisson's equation in the integral form = ‖ ‖ or the more common differential form =.