By some measures, the solar system’s moons are far more fascinating than the
planets they orbit. Mars’ two moons,
Phobos and Deimos, appear (not with those names) in Jonathan Swift’s classic Gulliver’s Travels (1726). Problem is, these two small moons were not
discovered until more than a hundred years later; unless he was telepathic,
Swift was presumably interpolating between Earth’s single moon and Jupiter’s
(then known) four.
(from Origins by Neil de Grasse Tyson and Donald Goldsmith)
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