Frankly, Wild About the Moons

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Take a guess at how many fabulous moons
or natural satellites we have floating about
in our glorious and busy little solar system!

I bet the number you are thinking is
an undershoot because man, are
there a sheer number of moons!

Naturally we have the 8 planets,
and 3 dwarf planets (Pluto, Ceres and Eris
who remain beef in my heart)
as the largest celestial bodies,
so how many moons betwixt?

If you said 30, then, well,
unfortunately no. Uranus alone
has 28 and where some of the
best names occur: Umbriel, Oberon
and Puck are spinning up there
like an intergalactic hockey team.

If you said 100, then, well,
unfortunately no. Jupiter has 95
moons on its own!
Ganymede, Io and Europa are as beefy
as our own Luna body!

If you said 200, then, well,
unfortunately no. If you add
all planets big and dwarf,
excluding the heavenly ringed Saturn,
you would have about 150,
even the gorgeous Pluto has 5!

If you bring Saturn in, if you request
that our second largest, and possibly
most majestic of space faring spheres,
into the equation,
then Saturn laughs at you with great aplomb.

Saturn out there with a confirmed 274 Moons
loving life, loving the mythical grand audience
of such spirits as
Thethys, Titan, Dione, Hyperion, Iapetus and Rhea
and I am giddy! Giddy that we have 428
extra balls of cool space dust
floating around us, and I long, I long
to be a space explorer,
touching down on all of those inviting locales.