51–60 of 69 posts
Isn't the term moon devalued too much by now? Isn't there terminology to classify these newly found 5km natural satelites differently from the massive moons like ours, Ganymede, Europa and so on? Something like dwarf moons or micromoons?
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“Today, class, we’re going to learn about Saturn’s newest moon, whose name the district has forbidden me from actually saying.”
Think of all the confusion that could be caused if the voted name was actually "whose name the district has forbidden me from actually saying".
Here's a visualization I made of the Saturn system with an option to highlight the newly discovered moons: https://typpo.github.io/spacekit/examples/saturn/index.html Besides the 20 new moons, I find it interesting that there are 8 "lost" moons. These are objects observed as far back as 2004 - but their current locations are unknown.
Very cool! I'm surprised that they orbit so quickly!
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Then why don't they orbit in the same direction, as the planets do? Aren't many moons gravitationally captured in any case?
Gravitational capture is the only way retrograde orbits could happen - a blob of spinning dust and gas just won't produce moons orbiting in opposite directions. Anything going in the "wrong" direction will be subject to a whole lot of drag forces and lose all of its orbital speed and fall inwards. Retrograde orbits have to happen by grabbing something late or after the formation phase. All of the discovered retrograd…
With planets, we started getting too many "planets" when we discovered more and more really tiny ones, so we started coming up with new names for them: "dwarf planet", "Trojan", "asteroid", etc. A small rock in the asteroid belt orbits the Sun, but it still isn't called a "planet".
It sounds like we need to do something similar with moons, or else it's going to get out of control. There's likely an absurd number of small rocks orbiting Saturn and Jupiter; should they really all be called "moons"?
Here's a visualization I made of the Saturn system with an option to highlight the newly discovered moons: https://typpo.github.io/spacekit/examples/saturn/index.html Besides the 20 new moons, I find it interesting that there are 8 "lost" moons. These are objects observed as far back as 2004 - but their current locations are unknown.
Very cool! It would be nice if there was a 'Highlight None' option in the drop-down.
Any notion of why the Earth has only one moon and other planets have hundreds?
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The Earth is miniscule in comparison to the planets that have hundreds of moons. Those just have a stronger gravity field
What about Mars?
I wish they would open up the naming of at least one moon to whatever the internet decides to come up with, rather than restricting it to the same old boring gods and goddesses convention. That moon would probably become one of the more popular celestial bodies in the solar system based on that alone.
A peeve I have would be to use a language of certainity ("has moons"): > This brings the ringed planet’s total number of moons to 82, surpassing Jupiter, which has 79 When it's clear we don't have the absolute truth. We need to be humble. It's clear then that Saturn has at least 82 moons. Or maybe not even that, taking account the "lost" moons mentioned in this discussion. Now we believe that Saturn has about 82 moon…
I don't read it that way. This is a science topic, I think the phrase "Jupiter, which has 79" does NOT mean "no more than 79" but does mean at least 79 that we know.
I don't think it signals a lack of humility. I think it is just shorthand for "Jupiter has 79 moons, that we have verified". Since this is in the context of discovering more moons that we hadn't seen before, I don't think the extra verbiage is necessary and is implied. Of course we are in the process of discovering more moons. That's what the entire article is about.
Here's a visualization I made of the Saturn system with an option to highlight the newly discovered moons: https://typpo.github.io/spacekit/examples/saturn/index.html Besides the 20 new moons, I find it interesting that there are 8 "lost" moons. These are objects observed as far back as 2004 - but their current locations are unknown.
This, your other examples, and spacekit as a whole are absolutely amazing. Thanks for sharing this link.