To me a Planet is an object that orbits its parent star.
A moon is an object that orbit a planet.
So yes i still see that Pluto is a planet.
But i know Saturn has more than 30 moons
Wiki says their are 53 named moons plus 9 un-named and
www.nineplanets.org/saturn.html says the same thing.
http://www.solarviews.com/eng/saturn.htm
This site seems to be way out of date.
Planets are distinguished from Dwarf Planets in that they are deemed to have 'cleared their neighbourhood' of any other obects that match them in terms of mass and gravitation. Size is not necessarily a decider in this because both Ganymede and Titan, which are moons, are larger in size Mercury, and Planet, but their lower densities mean that they are less massive. It just happens that all Dwarf Planets are very small because this small size and low density means their gravity wells are not particularly strong, nor are their hill spheres particular large.
Ceres doesn't fit the bill because it orbits in the asteroid belt, and it's orbit lies close to those of Juno, Pallas, Vesta, which are all very large asteroids of a similar size, but are non-spherical so they aren't considered dwarf planets.
Pluto doesn't because it is in a binary system with it's largest moon Charon, and they orbit around each others center of mass.
Haumea, Makemake anmd Eris don't because they lie in the Kuiper belt and so are surrounded by similar sized objects. With most of these though it is yet to be determined if they have acheived hydrostatic equilibrium or not. There could be many more Dwarf Planets in our Solar System.
The rings of the outer planets are defined as rings and not as moons because they are incredibly diffuse, incredibly thin (Saturn's rings are 50,00km wide, by only 20 metres thick), and made up of tiny particles, the largest of which are probably no bigger than a car. Close observations show that they are clearly the remnants of either a moon that exceeded the roche limit of it's primary and was ripped apart by tidal forces, or their was a collision between two moons. Also certain moons, like Io and Enceladus, erupt particles from geysers and volcanoes that add to the rings.
Not really.
I love astronomy.
And i am aware that Mars has asteroids that are moons.
Astronomy kicks ass!
Mars' moons are thought to be captured asteroids because of their small size, shape, composition, and because of the fact that Mars is in very close proximity to the asteroid belt.
I think i saw Triton through a telescope when i was younger.
You must mean Titan. Triton orbits Neptune, has half the diameter of Titan, and a considerable lower albedo than Titan does. Neptune itself comes out no more than a tiny blueish disk under even the most powerful ground-based telescopes.
