What is the natural sattelite of a moon called?

[fenderzilla]

I was playing around with the planet factory mod the other day. there's a small object called "pock", which orbits the moon Erin (Erin orbits the planet Sentar, which orbits kerbol). It popped into my head that I didn't know what to call pock, except for "the natural satellite of a moon". what is that actually called? a double moon? a sub-moon? a moon-moon (the dumbest of all wolves)? I hope there's actually an answer.

[Themohawkninja]

A moon/natural satellite.

As I understand it, when Pluto was demoted to a trans-Neptunian object, Charon was still referred to as Pluto's moon.

EDIT: Just checked the Wikipedia page on Charon, and it is referred to as the satellite or moon of Pluto.

Edited January 12, 2014 by Themohawkninja

[sal_vager]

Moons having their own moons are rare, conditions have to be just right and their orbits won't last.

Their term seems to be sub-satellite

[KittyProgram]

a moon-moon (the dumbest of all wolves)?

How dare you call Moon-Moon dumb! He's cute! >

[lajoswinkler]

IDK, but it would be good to use the term "moonlet". It already has more than one meaning...

[K^2]

If we actually find some systems like that, I'd also vote fore naming them "moonlets". Until then, the question is academic, so we aren't likely to have any sort of standardized term.

[Tex]

Hmm... maybe us Kerbonauts can team up to get an official name for these bodies! Moonies? Moonites? Sub-Moons? Muns?

Let's see... Moonoids, Satelloids, Moonsters, Moonables? Any other ideas?

[nhnifong]

Pluto-Charon isn't entirely out of the question right? It supposedly has a few tiny moons that we're not sure about. When New Horizons get's there we're have a better picture.

[Kryten]

Pluto-Charon isn't entirely out of the question right? It supposedly has a few tiny moons that we're not sure about. When New Horizons get's there we're have a better picture.

The moons are known to exist for sure, to the extent they've been officially named, but they orbit around the system barycentre in the same way Charon does. I don't really see how they're relevant to this situation.

[NovaSilisko]

There isn't really a name for them because we don't know of any in existence. The most likely case I'd say would be a boulder of ice in orbit around a moon of saturn, plucked from the rings... but can you -really- call a meter-wide lump of ice in an orbit that only lasts for two months, a moon?

[dharak1]

They predicted that Rhea had rings and possibly small moons, when they got there they didn't see any though.

[lajoswinkler]

In fact, I'd rather use a name with Greek or Latin prefix or sufix, to make it international and scientific, so any word with "moon" can't fit that description.

Satelloid is apparently taken. "-oid" means "like, therefore not as" as in spheroid, sphere-like. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/satelloid

Subsatellite is applicable.

Satellide is something that just came to my mind as a good idea. "-ide" means something like "belonging to". Chlorine, chloride (compound of chlorine).

Endosatellite would mean "satellite within (system)".

Maybe idiosatellite? "Idio-" means "its own".

Edited January 13, 2014 by lajoswinkler

[fenderzilla]

can you -really- call a meter-wide lump of ice in an orbit that only lasts for two months, a moon?

Well no, you can't. A moon is a natural sattelite of substantial size that can be tracked. that's why each one of the rocks in saturn's rings aren't moons, and neither are tiny specks of dust in earth's orbit.

[kiwiak]

Charon and Pluto rotate around their barycenter and there is bunch of other small moons too..

I wonder how woudl navigation in system like this looked ingame, if we had n-body system.

[aeTIos]

I'd call it a moonlet.

[K^2]

Charon and Pluto rotate around their barycenter and there is bunch of other small moons too..

I wonder how woudl navigation in system like this looked ingame, if we had n-body system.

Shouldn't be all that much different. You are going to be either predominantly influenced by one of the objects, or by system's barycenter. If this wasn't so, that binary system couldn't have moons of its own anyways. Naturally, there are going to be a whole lot of perturbations and corrections, so a general orbit might ending up a bit weird, but so long as you have means of predicting your path, you can always make corrections for this.

[DevoidLight]

Given perfect conditions, could a sub-satellite even have a stable orbit around a moon?

[kerner]

I don't think there is an official name for it unless we have discovered it. If there is a planet 3 times the size of jupiter and a moon the size of Venus then there might be a sub-moon a little bit smaller than the moon.