There are 288 discovered natural satellites – or moons, as they are colloquially known – in the Solar system. Most of these are found in the outer gas giants. However, many of these have not received proper names as they were discovered recently and have yet to be confirmed. Only 164 moons have proper names.
Out of those, there are 10 moons whose names start with the letter M. These are all listed in the following table. Below you will also find some additional details about each, including physical characteristics, the original meaning of their names, etc.
| Name | Planet | Name meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Mab | Uranus | Named after a charcter in Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet |
| Margaret | Uranus | Named after a charcter in Shakespeare’s play Much Ado About Nothing |
| Megaclite | Jupiter | Princess of the Locris region. |
| Methone | Saturn | One of the Alkyonides, the seven beatiful daughters of Alkyoneus |
| Metis | Jupiter | First wife of Zeus and mother of Athena. |
| Mimas | Saturn | One of the Gigantes (giants). Son of Gaia (Earth) |
| Miranda | Uranus | Named after a charcter in Shakespeare’s play The Tempest |
| Mneme | Jupiter | One of the three original muses (goddesses of literature, science, and arts) |
| Moon | Earth | “month” |
| Mundilfari | Saturn | Father of the Sun and the Moon in Norse mythology |
Mab
Discovered in 2003 by Mark Showalter and Jack Lissauer using the Hubble Space Telescope, Mab is one of the inner moons of Uranus. Named after Queen Mab, a fairy who appears in Romeo and Juliet, this tiny moon is only about 25 kilometers in diameter. It’s located within Uranus’s rings and is thought to contribute material to the μ (mu) ring.
Margaret
Margaret, a small irregular moon of Uranus discovered in 2003 by Scott Sheppard and David Jewitt, is named after the witty heroine in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. With an estimated diameter of only about 20 kilometers, it orbits Uranus in a retrograde direction, suggesting it may be a captured asteroid.
Megaclite
Megaclite is a small irregular satellite of Jupiter, discovered in 2000 by a team led by Scott Sheppard. Named after the princess of Locris who bore two children to Zeus in Greek mythology, it’s about 5.4 kilometers in diameter. It belongs to the Pasiphae group, characterized by retrograde orbits around Jupiter.
Methone
Discovered in 2004 by the Cassini imaging team, Methone is one of Saturn’s small inner moons. Named after one of the Alkyonides (daughters of the giant Alkyoneus), this tiny moon is only about 3 kilometers in diameter. Remarkably, it has an extremely smooth, egg-like shape, possibly due to being covered in fine particles from Saturn’s E ring.
Metis
Metis, discovered in 1979 by Stephen Synnott during the Voyager 1 flyby, is Jupiter’s innermost known moon. Named after Zeus’s first wife who was the mother of Athena, it’s about 43 kilometers in diameter. Its orbit is so close to Jupiter that it completes a revolution in less than seven hours, and it’s gradually spiraling inward due to tidal forces.
Mimas
Mimas, discovered by William Herschel in 1789, is one of Saturn’s major inner moons. Named after a giant in Greek mythology, it’s famous for its enormous impact crater Herschel, which makes it resemble the Death Star from Star Wars. The crater is about 130 kilometers wide, nearly one-third the diameter of Mimas itself (396 kilometers).
Miranda
Miranda, discovered by Gerard Kuiper in 1948, is the smallest and innermost of Uranus’s five major moons. Named after the daughter of Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, it features some of the most diverse and extreme topography in the solar system, including cliffs up to 20 kilometers high. Its unique surface suggests it was possibly broken apart and reassembled multiple times in its history.
Mneme
Mneme is a small outer moon of Jupiter discovered in 2003 by Scott Sheppard’s team. Named after one of the original three muses in Greek mythology, it’s only about 2 kilometers in diameter. It belongs to the Ananke group of irregular satellites, which orbit Jupiter in a retrograde direction.
Moon
Earth’s Moon, known since prehistoric times, is the fifth largest satellite in the solar system. The word “moon” comes from the Old English word “mona,” related to the word “month,” reflecting its monthly cycle. At 3,475 kilometers in diameter, it’s the only celestial body besides Earth that humans have physically visited. It was formed approximately 4.5 billion years ago, likely from debris following a massive collision between Earth and a Mars-sized object.
Mundilfari
Mundilfari, discovered in 2000 by Brett Gladman’s team, is an irregular moon of Saturn. Named after the father of Sol (Sun) and Mani (Moon) in Norse mythology, it’s approximately 7 kilometers in diameter. It belongs to the Norse group of irregular satellites and orbits Saturn in a retrograde direction at an average distance of about 18.7 million kilometers.
Click on a letter below for a list of moons that begin with it.
A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z
Related:
For more on how moons are named check out this article.