(Or: how much one can get out of drawing circles)
The following figure depicts the distances of the most important satellites of planets. (This figure is not mine; it was made available to me, courtesy of John Rehling.)
The above figure is a bit long (1000 pixels wide), but there is a reason for that. If you look at the far right side you will see Saturn’s Iapetus, just a few pixels off the right edge. That’s not as far as satellites can go, though. Jupiter’s Sinope, for example, is around 6.6 times farther from Jupiter than Iapetus is from Saturn.
On the other hand, look how close Phobos and Deimos are to Mars!
The table below gives the distances, in kilometers, of almost all known satellites, including the ones not shown in the above diagram. Take a look in the “not shown” portions of the table, and see how far (or how close) some satellites can reach.
| Earth | km | Jupiter | km | Saturn | km | Uranus | km | Neptune | km |
| Moon | 384,400 | Amalthea | 181,300 | Janus | 151,472 | Miranda | 129,850 | Larissa | 73,600 |
| Io | 422,000 | Mimas | 185,520 | Ariel | 190,930 | Proteus | 117,600 | ||
| Mars | Europa | 670,900 | Enceladus | 238,020 | Umbriel | 265,980 | Triton | 354,760 | |
| Phobos | 9,378 | Ganymede | 1,070,000 | Tethys | 294,660 | Titania | 436,270 | ||
| Deimos | 23,459 | Callisto | 1,883,000 | Dione | 377,400 | Oberon | 583,420 | Not shown | |
| Rhea | 527,040 | Naiad | 48,200 | ||||||
| Pluto | Not shown | Titan | 1,221,830 | Not shown | Thalassa | 50,000 | |||
| Charon | 19,640 | Metis | 128,000 | Hyperion | 1,481,100 | Cordelia | 49,752 | Despina | 52,600 |
| Adrastea | 129,000 | Iapetus | 3,561,300 | Ophelia | 53,764 | Galatea | 62,000 | ||
| Thebe | 222,000 | Bianca | 59,165 | Nereid | 5,513,400 | ||||
| Leda | 11,094,000 | Not shown | Cressida | 61,767 | |||||
| Himalia | 11,480,000 | Pan | 133,583 | Desdemona | 62,659 | ||||
| Lysithea | 11,720,000 | Atlas | 137,670 | Juliet | 64,358 | ||||
| Elara | 11,737,000 | Prometheus | 139,350 | Portia | 66,097 | ||||
| Ananke | 21,200,000 | Pandora | 141,700 | Rosalind | 69,927 | ||||
| Carme | 22,600,000 | Epimetheus | 151,422 | Belinda | 75,255 | ||||
| Pasiphae | 23,500,000 | Telesto | 294,660 | Puck | 86,006 | ||||
| Sinope | 23,700,000 | Calypso | 294,660 | Caliban | 7,100,000 | ||||
| Helene | 377,400 | Sycorax | 12,200,000 | ||||||
| Phoebe | 12,952,000 |