Suggested Searches

Earth’s Moon, By the Numbers

Compare key statistics for the Earth and Moon:

Image of the Moon.
Earth's Moon
vs.Image of the Earth zoomed out to span the entire Americas and part of Africa. The visible land is primarily green to dusky brown in color, aside from Northern Africa, which is a bright tan color. Clouds are interspersed across the entire image obscuring much of the land and blue ocean below, but a slight discoloration between Africa and South America is labeled as dust. A significant darkened swirl coupled against the swirling clouds over North America. This is labeled as smoke.
Earth


SIZE COMPARISON
Diagram comparing the size of the Earth's Moon to Earth.
Earth's Moon is 3.7x smaller than Earth


AVERAGE ORBIT DISTANCE
Average of minimum and maximum distances from an object to the body it orbits.
384,400 km149,598,262 km

MEAN ORBIT VELOCITY
The average speed of an object over an entire orbit.
3,680.5 km/h107,218 km/h

ORBIT ECCENTRICITY
The amount an object's orbit deviates from a perfect circle.
0.05540.01671123

EQUATORIAL INCLINATION
The tilt of an object's equator in relation to the plane of the ecliptic.
6.68 degrees23.4393 degrees

EQUATORIAL RADIUS
The distance from the center of an object to its equator.
1,737.5 km6,371.00 km

EQUATORIAL CIRCUMFERENCE
The distance around an object at the equator.
10,917.0 km40,030.2 km

VOLUME
The amount of space an object occupies.
21,971,669,064 km31,083,206,916,846 km3

DENSITY
Mass per volume.
3.344 g/cm35.513 g/cm3

MASS
A fundamental physics term describing how much matter an object is made up of.
73,476,730,924,573,500,000,000 kg5,972,190,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg

SURFACE AREA
The outer or uppermost part of a planet, moon, asteroid, comet or other body.
37,936,694.79 km2510,064,472 km2

SURFACE GRAVITY
The gravitational acceleration experienced at the world's surface, at the equator.
1.624 m/s29.80665 m/s2

ESCAPE VELOCITY
The speed needed for an object to break away from the gravitational pull of a planet or moon.
8,552 km/h40,284 km/h

Source: JPL Solar System Dynamics website