The seven largest satellites in the Solar System (those bigger than 2,500 km across) in order are Jupiter's Galilean moons (Ganymede, Callisto, Io, and Europa), Saturn's Titan, this, and Neptune's Triton.
Earth's moon
Rhea and Iapetus were given their names based on a suggestion of John Herschel (son of William Herschel, the discoverer of Uranus) as they were these siblings of Cronus (Saturn) in Greek myth.
Titans
Because Mimas the moon of Saturn contains a very noticeable crater (Herschel), it is jocularly compared to this super weapon of a certain movie franchise.
Death Star
This German astronomer who had a lot to say about how planets move coined the word "satellite" from the Latin satelles meaning companion/attendant.
Johannes Kepler
The largest moon of the Solar System, this orbiter of Jupiter has a magnetic field, a very thin oxygen atmosphere and an ocean said to contain more water than all of Earth’s oceans combined. In mythology, he was carried away by the gods for his physical beauty and became their cupbearer. The word "catamite", meaning a boy kept for homosexual practices, comes from his name.
Ganymede
Of the five satellites of Pluto, Charon, named for the boatman, is well-known. Can you name the other four named for:
(a) Mother of Charon and the goddess of darkness
(b) Serpent that guards the underworld
(c) Dog
(d) River(a) Nix
(b) Hydra
(c) Kerberos
(d) StyxBoth Phobos (“fear”) and Deimos (“dread”) of Mars were discovered by this American astronomer in 1877. And they get their name from these beings that help Mars.
Asaph Hall; horses that pulled his chariot
Uranus’s largest moons that are named for characters from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Titania and Oberon
With over 400 active volcanoes, this moon of Jupiter is the most geologically active place in the Solar System and it is believed to be because of the influence of the mother planet and its other moons.
Io
Moons that use their gravity to "collect" various debris and help in keeping the form of a planet's ring are called these. Some examples are: Amalthea, Metis, Adrastea, and Thebe of Jupiter; Prometheus, Daphnis, and Pan of Saturn; Ophelia and Cordelia of Uranus.
Shepard moons
The surface of this second largest moon of Jupiter is said to be the oldest in the Solar System and it has been suggested for future use as a human base to study the Jovian system. In Greek myth, she was the hunting companion of Artemis and bore the son of Zeus who was named Arcus, the eponymous hero of Arcadia.
Callisto
Till date, though none have been discovered (owing to the difficulty of observing them with present-day technology), in September 2019, it was reported that the observed fluctuations in the brightness of Tabby's Star in the constellation Cygnus might have been caused by one of these. Given the context of the quiz, can you guess what they are?
Exomoon (satellite of an exoplanet)
This satellite of Neptune is the largest irregularly shaped moon and takes its name from the shape-changing sea god of Greek mythology.
Proteus
The third-largest moon of Saturn is unusual in having one hemisphere brighter than the other first observed by its discoverer Giovanni Cassini. It is also the name of a large ancient ocean in Earth's history which in turn was named for the father of Atlas in Greek myth.
Iapetus
Of all the moons that orbit Saturn, Epimetheus and this other "two-faced" moon have nearly the same orbit. They never crash into each other because of complex interplay of their mutual gravitational attraction.
Janus
Discovered in 1995 by the Galileo probe, Dactyl is an unusual moon for this reason.
It orbits Ida, an asteroid
Dactyl is also the first asteroid moon discovered and since then, many others have been found.
This satellite of Saturn has a surface covered mostly with ice with a likely ocean underneath and is also known to contain geysers. For this reason, it is high on the list of places that are probed for the possibility of life.
Enceladus
Saturn's largest moon is full of watery bodies made of methane and other hydrocarbons and because of the presence of these organic materials, it is a candidate for the possibility of life. NASA's proposed Dragonfly mission is planned to visit it in 2034.
Titan
Other than Pluto, the Solar System has four other prominent dwarf planets and of these, Ceres in the asteroid belt has no moons. Can you name the others from the names of their moons and other clues?
(a) Its moon is Dysnomia and it is named after the goddess of strife in Greek myth
(b) Its moon is nicknamed MK2 and its repeating name is from the creator of humanity in the myth of the people of Easter Island
(c) Its two moons are Namaka and Hi'iaka and it is named after the goddess of fertility in Hawaiian myth(a) Eris (Dysnomia is her daughter)
(b) Makemake
(c) HaumeaThe three moons of Uranus named after characters in Pope's The Rape of the Lock are?:
(a) Also a character in The Tempest and the spirit who helps Prospero
(b) Suggests a shadow
(c) First name of the lead singer of the Go-Go's(a) Ariel
(b) Umbriel
(c) BelindaIn 2005, when this lander successfully touched down on Titan, it became the farthest landing from Earth a spacecraft has ever made. Appropriately it was named for the Dutch astronomer and polymath who discovered the moon in 1655.
Huygens, part of the Cassini–Huygens mission
Smallest of the four Galilean moons, it is named after the Phoenician mother of King Minos of Crete and lover of Zeus and contains the smoothest surface of any solid object in the Solar System.
Europa
The largest moon of Neptune, it is mostly frozen nitrogen, and its crust is made of water ice, and it has an icy mantle. The only mission to visit it was Voyager 2 in 1989. It is also the only large moon with a retrograde orbit (circles its planet in a direction opposite to the planet's rotation). Name comes from the son of the sea god Poseidon in Greek myth, and the name is also a generic term for a merman.
Triton
European Space Agency’s mission, whose name is also the nickname of O.J. Simpson, that is currently slated for a 2022 launch and which will study Jupiter's moons.
Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer (JUICE)