A moon's moon from this day forward shall be called a "kipping".

Wouldn't it be interesting if there were an intelligent species living on a submoon somewhere in the vast cosmos. Imagine the mythology that could develop from looking into such a night sky.

I vote for 'moonlet' as a substitute for submoon. It seems to fit quite well in my opinion.

If there's ever an Outer Wilds 2, they should definitely explore moons of moons. Maybe a planet with one moon that has one moon that has one moon. Or a planet with two moons that each have a moon.

The extension to this question is whether binary planets can exist, and whether they can share a moon, and whether binary moons can exist.. and could binary planets share a binary moon.. around binary stars.

Since moon is derived from the word month, we could derive a name from the Latin word for week. Like Septimana or mana. So in short: planet, moon, mana

I think to denote a submoon, you should simple add an 'o' to the word "moon". So a moon orbiting another moon would be a mooon. You can repeat this pattern as many times as you like: a moon orbiting a submoon would be called a moooon. Naturally, this would classify planets as mons, and the stars they orbit as mns.

I’ve always had the question, could moons be gaseous? I know that the likelihood of something like happening is slim. I would assume that it would just be considered binary to another planet.

I'm a software dev, not an astronomer, so I'm not sure what specialties might benefit from a detailed hierarchy below "submoon", but from where I'm standing submoon seems just fine. Any further sub iterations of that relationship type seems like it could just be captured with the phrase "natural satellite"; natsats for short, as in, "Hey Jimmy, get me a natsat count of that submoon so I can calculate a landing approach."

I think the terms primary, secondary and tertiary would work when referring to levels instead of order. Planet > primary (moon) > secondary > (primary's moon) > tertiary (secondary's moon). Not sure I've illustrated the idea properly but hopefully well enough to be understandable. Great video.

I clicked on this expecting quackery. Pleasantly surprised to find actual science. Somebody has already suggested the rather simple primary/secondary/tertiary designation for moons/submoons. That seems perfectly reasonable to me. I also like submoon. I very seriously doubt such a thing is stable enough to need additional levels. I would bet monumental amounts of someone else's money that we could search the entire galaxy and never find a moon around an earth around a neptune around a jupiter. That's just a razor's edge of a goldilocks scenario.

Considering the wild perturbations between small moons that go on in the Jovian and Saturnine systems, I think it's pretty safe to say such systems would be fleeting, perhaps even cyclic as highly elliptical orbits transition from orbiting the moon to orbiting the parent body. At the apogee of such orbits, the influence of other bodies could cause some wild stuff to occur, most of it being very brief.

I kind of like the idea of calling them a Sublet (because they are renting space from another larger object that is also renting.)

I really like these natural backdrops, adds something extra to already incredibly made videos.

Never would have guessed that I would find a new channel this evening. I was busy catching up on my subscribed channels this evening, saw the question and clicked expecting Simon Whistler (I wouldn't mind his take on this topic, mind you). I was so pleasantly surprised to find a scientist exploring a serious question in a fun and relatable way. Learned about the Hill sphere tonight. I may have heard of it before but with your explanation and the wonderful diagram at 3:31 it will now stick. That diagram shows the LaGrange points better than I've seen before. Subbed, bell clicked, and now I've got another back catalog to binge when I need one. Thank you!

You deserve so much more subscribers. Your videos are so well produced and so extremely informative. Big up and keep going for one day soon I hope you reach a million and even 10.

In my own speculation among friends I've called them "meta-moons". I was imagining a hypothetical moon of Neptune (since that's the planet with the largest Hill sphere wrt the Sun) and a hypothetical meta-moon of that, and so on, but back when I was speculating on this I didn't even know that for prograde orbits it should be within half a hill radius.

in these situations I remember the "moons are planets" article With that in mind, I propose the following: 1st degree planet: planets that orbit stellar objects 2nd degree planet: standard moons 3rd degree planet: moonmoons and so on maybe we could call rogue planets 0th degree planets for fun's sake

Thank you. As soon as I saw the title, I hoped you would talk about Hill Spheres. I wrote a novel where I had to work out the Hill sphere for a couple of bodies, though only planets. I was amazed at how much was uncertain in the calculation. Sounds like a ripe area for research for someone. Anyway, thank you, and subscribed. As for the name, I'd just stick with moon. My argument would be we could follow the example for 'island'. There are islands in lakes on islands. Still called an island. There might be a technical term, but considering the relative rarity, I don't think we need to fuss over it too much.

Maybe we can refer to moons of moons as grandmoons, and to their moons as great-grandmoons, etc. Alternately, we could refer to moons as grandplanets of a star, and moons of moons could be called great-grandplanets of the star, etc.

So, as an Elder Scrolls fan, I simply have to put forward the idea that a submoon should be called a Secunda, and its parent moon be called a Masser after the moons Masser and Secunda from The Elder Scrolls. It is the first example I can think of when it comes to a fictional case of a moon having a submoon. In this case, Secunda is a submoon of Masser, which is a moon of the planet Nirn. It's not an entirely accurate depiction of a submoon because Nirn is presumably an Earth-sized object, Masser is presumably a Mars-sized object, and Secunda is presumably a Moon-sized object, but The Elder Scrolls is a high-magic medieval fantasy series and not science fiction, and it still makes for a pretty cool night sky in the game.

In my opinion, I think calling a submoon, a submoon is perfectly fine because of the fact that dwarf planets are called dwarf planets. And a moon orbiting the submoon should probably be given a different name that does not include the name ‘moon’ in it

This is really cool. I imagine with what I think i know about filters, great filters and biology in general that these submoons would be very unlikely candidates for life though? Short lifespan of the submoon in a relatively unstable orbit with a giant planet blocking most of sunlight, plenty of volcanic shenanigans to ruin your day etc..

You make everything seem so easy, the explanations are fantastic! Thank you!

A moon of a moon should be called Endymion who was one of Luna's consorts (the other being Jupiter but that's already taken). A moon of a moon of a moon would be a Menae, the collective name for Luna's offspring.

Now just imagine what eclipses may look like in these configurations ! And the math behind predicting them 🌕

Thank you for the explanation. I have always been confused about the mechanism of lunar migration, and your phrasing has enlightened me somewhat.

Your final thoughts are always so inspiring and almost always put into words what I feel myself.

I am in no way connected to the fields of scientific research but these videos always fill me with wonder and hope enough to go the extra mile and learn about these subjects.

As Leibniz put it: “If an ontological theory implies the existence of two scenarios that are empirically indistinguishable in principle but ontologically distinct ... then the ontological theory should be rejected and replaced with one relative to which the two scenarios are ontologically identical.” In other words, if a theory describes two situations as being distinct, and yet also implies that there is no conceivable way, empirically, to tell them apart, then that theory contains some superfluous and arbitrary elements that ought to be removed. Leibniz’s prescription is, of course, widely accepted by most physicists today. The idea exerted a powerful influence over later thinkers, including Poincaré and Einstein, and helped lead to the theories of special and general relativity. And this idea, Spekkens suggests, may still hold further value for questions at the frontiers of today’s physics. Leibniz’s correspondent Clarke objected to his view, suggesting an exception. A man riding inside a boat, he argued, may not detect its motion, yet that motion is obviously real enough. Leibniz countered that such motion is real because it can be detected by someone, even if it isn’t actually detected in some particular case. “Motion does not indeed depend upon being observed,” he wrote, “but it does depend upon being possible to be observed ... when there is no change that can be observed, there is no change at all.” In this, Leibniz was arguing against prevailing ideas of the time, and against Newton, who conceived of space and time in absolute terms. “I have said more than once,” Leibniz wrote, “that I hold space to be something merely relative.” Einstein, of course, followed Leibniz’s principle when he noticed that the equations of electricity and magnetism make no reference to any absolute sense of motion, but only to relative motion. A conducting wire moving through the field of a magnet seems like a distinct situation from a magnet moving past a stationary wire. Yet the two situations are in fact empirically identical, and should, Einstein concluded, be considered as such. Demanding as much leads to the Lorentz transformation as the proper way to link descriptions in reference frames in relative motion. From this, one finds a host of highly counter-intuitive effects, including time dilation. Einstein again followed Leibniz on his way to general relativity. In this case, the indistinguishability of two distinct situations - a body at rest in the absence of a gravitational field, or in free fall within a field - implied the impossibility of referring to any concept of absolute acceleration. In a 1922 lecture, Einstein recalled the moment of his discovery: “The breakthrough came suddenly one day. I was sitting on a chair in my patent office in Bern. Suddenly the thought struck me: If a man falls freely, he would not feel his own weight. I was taken aback. This simple thought experiment made a deep impression on me. This led me to the theory of gravity.”

Now, another relevant question: Can a moon be tidally locked around its star, rather its planet?

I think a good naming system for sub-moons might being an ordering system. What we call a moon would be a first order moon, a sub-moon would be a second order moon, a sub-sub-moon would be a third order moon, etc.

The research I would like to see next on this subject would be about the probability of these things forming. Either from the original planet forming nebula or by capture. Also how a planet that used to have this arrangement that wasn't stable enough what the likely outcome was. E.g. if it is likely the submoon just becomes a parent planet's moon and if so what properties the orbit would likely have as a means to see if there is an indicator that a moon used to be a submoon of a particular other moon.

I told my wife about this, and she insisted that the naming should be romantic, and mentioned that (in English) there are two letters in between the first letters of Sun, Planet and Moon. Hence, her proposed convention is: Sun, Planet, Moon, Jewel, Gem, and anything after that would be Dust (or at least names beginning with 'J', 'G' and 'D'). Well, she's an engineer, not an astrophysisist! 😂

I was thinking of this, Thanks for making this video

Ever since I was introduced to this idea in the game Starbound, it just made sense for a planet with its moons to orbit around a huge gas giant. Makes for cool skyscapes as well

Suggested Vocab for such objects: Moons: Natsats: Natural satellites Snatsats: Sub natural satellites Plasats: Planet sized natural satellites Astsats: Asteroid sized natural satellites Quasets: Temporary natural satellites Aethsats: Natural satellites with atmosphere (named after Aether) Hephasats: Natural satellite with volcanic activity (named after Hephaestus) Ringsats: Natural satellites contributing to some contribution to a ring system Asteroids: Zweistroids (or Bistroids): Binary asteroid systems Planets: Zweinets (or Binets): Binary planetary system Dreinets (or Trinets): Trinary planetary system Minets: Minor planets Vulnets: Mercury like small terrestrial close orbit planets (named after Vulcan) Ginets: Major gas giants Brownets: Brown dwarf planets Hadenets: Hot jupiters (named after Hades) Snepnets: Sub neptunes Posnets: Minor gas gaints (named after Poseidon) Promnets: Super earths (named after Prometheus) Aquainets: Earth clones (named after Aquaites) Odd astronomical planets: (suffix O.A meaning Odd Analog) Clocoas: Chlorine planets (named after Cloacina) Rogueoa: Rogue planets Orcusoa: Long orbital period planets (named after Orcus) Liberoa: Planet not on a stellar plane orbit (named after Liber) Minervoa: Phosphorus planet (named after Minerva) Lavernoa: Tidally locked planet (named after Leverna) Pomanoa: Coreless planets (named after Pomona) Kavehoa: Iron planet (named after Kaveh, an ancient Iranian blacksmith) Zaroa: Lava planet (named after Zoroaster, ancient Iranian founder) Hycanoa: Hycean planet Deavoa: Dessert planet (named after Deava) Pulsoa: Pulsar planet Toroidoa: Toroidal planet (donut planet) Eishoa: Ultra cool dwarf star planets (named after Eisheth, a demon in Hebrew mythology) Zizoa: Disrupted planets (named after Ziz, a Hebrew griffon) Illuyoa: Ocean planets (named after Illuyanka, a Hittite serpentine entity) Rocoa: Ultra short period planets (named after Roc, a Arabian legendary bird of prey)

We're still too hung up on our own solar system. We think every 'hot Jupiter' MUST have formed in the outer solar system of whatever star and then move in over time. What if it formed _before_ the star started fusing hydrogen? It would be colder maybe even fairly close to the proto-star. I'm sure I'm likely wrong but it bugs me how much we favor our own planet and solar system even after finding that *we* are the anomaly.

This was immensely enjoyable, we need more.

I suggest the word glant for a submoon. Thanks a lot for that informative video. I love the idea of a civilization living on a glant (or kipping or mana) and watching their moon and their planet and their sun rise. I hope to see the movie soon.

Professor Kipping truly a beautiful mind. Thank you Professor.

This is truly unexpected, thank you for sharing amazing and inspiring information. I can only imagine your hardwork and great efforts for the community. Thank you again sir. 💖

When you got to Iapetus it raised one additional question in my mind. The analysis seemed to assume a submoon around a plant with only one moon (like Earth.) But what happens if that is not the case? What happens to that submoon when you consider the gravitational effects of multiple satellites orbiting the same planet, ala Jupiter or Saturn? Also, there's one other situation where it seems reasonable that a submoon ought to be able to exist around a moon that is closer to a planet and that would be a submoon in polar orbit aligned with the direction of the moon's orbit about its plant. (So the moon and submoon are effectively at the same distance from the planet.) In a sense, in that configuration you might consider both to be moons of the planet and not a hierarchical arrangement. I don't know that anything such as that can exist but it presents an interesting picture.

So happy to have found my favourite channel on UKposts!!

I'm fond of 'moonmoon' and 'noom'. Very clear video! Looking at the new JWST deep field you realise somewhere in that image has to be a moonmoonmoon.

My guess, being only 2.5min in to this vid, is that whether a sub-moon is possible depends on the eccentricity and distance of the main moon's orbit around the planet, as well as how massive each of them are. I'd guess that tidal forces and just the chaotic nature of a 3-body system would be the main obstacles to stability, but I switched my major away from physics so 🤷‍♂️ (I still obviously love it, though! 😁)

Dude, I can’t get enough of your channel!

First of all, for this question I always imagined it would be most viable in a system with a superjupiter planet and a brown dwarf behaving similarly to a binary system. Then, what would normally be a planet in that system would become and moon, and what would be a moon becomes a natural lunar satellite. Second, would it be possible to effectively negate the effects of tidal acceleration by having a moon with a orbit equal to the rotation of it’s planet?

Great video as always. I remember reading that our moon could not hold a moon of it's own due to the luna mascon that lay under the surface. I remember reading this as the reasons that satellites placed in luna orbit by the Apollo Program failed quickly. However I think that a submoon is a great idea but think it would be something that would exist in young systems.

My 1st video of the day and I'm met with Dr Kipping's beaming smile from one ear to the other. If only all youtube videos started like this! Moony-moons? Is a moon-moon's orbit "mooning"? How moony is your moon?

I noticed a version of that tidal migration you mentioned when trying to create an Earth-like planet with two moons in a gravity simulator. I started with ones that were large (like 25% Earth gravity and 10% Earth gravity respectively) and it quickly destabilized with the outer one becoming a planet in its own right (experimenting with different orbital distances didn't help - like one moon would crash into the other or the planet itself!) but they seemed stabler when I made them much less massive (or if I put the larger moon on the outside - it seemed to shepherd the smaller inner one) but I don't know if they could last billions of years

i was waiting for a video to discuss this

Hi! I am Neda Heidari, a PhD student at LAM, France. Thank you so much for sharing this video with us! Great job 👌 I am very interested in the moon detections!

Thank you for everything you do. This is something that has been absolutely amazing. I really hope you get to make the first confirmation. Your work is some of my favorite, qnd amazing, you inspire me to reach for my dreams. Thank you

I'm really into astronomy and this concept really gave me food for thought. Please keep bringing up topics like these. It forces the mind to think out of the box creatively......😊😊 And for the 'submoon', I would've really called it :-- VENUSA(S)...... I don't know, it came to my mind randomly, just out of the blue and I really liked it...😂😂

Something I've wondered about for some time. For history I like "moon" and "submoon" for simplicity. As a computer programmers I'm wondering about sub2moon, sub3moon for the extras. There would likely not be that many of them and not having a punctuation mark (including superscripts, subscripts, etc) would make web searches more practical. Web searches should always be considered in naming new things.

The Moon has a name. Its is "Luna". (not specifically directed at the makers of this doco). Constantly referring to Luna as "The Moon" may be convenient in the beginning, but ultimately its like always referring to the neighbors as "the neighbors". Once we are talking about moons around moons, we should definitely used Luna's proper name, when referring to it. But Thanks for a well researched and well explained story :)

Honestly, it makes sense the answer is yes since the moon orbits us, we orbit the sun, and the sun orbits a black hole at the center of our galaxy. To me that makes it feel like the only limit, other than those gravity areas you mentioned, is the amount of mass getting smaller. I think I would think, getting bigger, the black hole at the center of our galaxy might be able to orbit something unknown with a greater gravity and such an idea with continue indefinitely. Hence, we should be focusing bigger, not smaller in my opinion.

Some time ago as part of a universtiy course I was asked how we would number moons of exoplanets, the latin numerals seemed the most obvious as it wasn't part of the [star name] - letter system, I'm glad to see it was taken up ;-) As for sub sub moons, perhaps the musical system should be used, after semi quaver you don't get semi-semi-quaver and then semi-semi-semi-quaver, it goes something like demi- and hemi-.

Cool video; an interesting conundrum to ponder. I’m certain the universe has many secrets to reveal to us still. We just have to keep looking!

I've got a suggestion for the sub-moons. Planets of third orbit order. This would turn moons into planets of second orbit order and planets into planets of first orbit order. What do you think?

I loved this. Especially your closing statement. Although i do love living in our age of discovery, sometimes I try and imagine what it must have been like for starseekers before voyager and mariner took to the skies and proved we were alone in our solar system. To look up at mars and beyond and believe that maybe someone was looking back must have been an amazing feeling.

Hey David, I just want you to know that I found a submoon in Elite: Dangerous. Considering this game predicted the Trappist-1 system down to the position, star class and mass, plus the number and configuration of planets, I think it's safe to say that the math checks out.

The fact I thought of "submoons" in the beginning and you actually used that word later in the video, wow :D

Sub-moon seems like a fine term. My gut tells me that sub-moons are "fairly" rare, requires something like one in every million or so systems have sub-moons.

Much of the arguments in this video seem to be based on the fact that tidal forces between two bodies will cause them to slowly move away or towards each other. But what if the two objects become tidally locked? Wouldn't they then be stable (at least in respects to this effect)?

When this video first started I thought "moonmoon" independently cause it sounded silly & I liked saying it. But I think sub-moon sounds much better & more professional. As if to imply planets & their orbital satellites can be organized into a hierarchical structure such as a file system for a database. Galaxy > planet > moon > sub-moon, idk if this is how it would be organized, but as someone who is very particular about keeping things neatly organized I quite like the name sub-moon & believe your choice is spot on.

A moon with its own magnetic field is more likely to have submoons orbiting it or capture one into stable orbit. Ganymede is more likely to capture a submoon into its orbit someday. Magnetic field is also the likely reason why planets and moons orbit in the same plane.

There's a theory that Venus once had a moon that spiraled in over several billion years (due to Venus's slow rotational period) and collided. This would explain Venus's surface appearing to be no older than several hundred million years.

Some days ago a question came to my mind, and I think you can answer it: let's imagine our solar system hadn't had any ringed planet like Saturn. When would humanity have envisaged such objects?

Thanks for the video. What about multiple sub moons around a single moon? Give them a nice relative harmonic frequency (is that the right word) of each other to keep them stable, like Jupiter and Saturn.

While I think other solutions are better, the way I have most commonly seen to construct terms where you’d naturally want to apply the same prefix multiple times is to find 3 or 4 prefixes with the same literal meaning and alternate them. So using the equivalents of “sub-“ (which is from Latin) from Germanic roots you get “under-“ and from Greek roots “hypo-,“ so putting them together you could get “undersubmoon” for a moon of a moon of a moon, “hypo-undersubmoon” for moon of a moon of a moon of a moon, “subhypo-undersubmoon” for moon^5, etc. While for most non-joke purposes I’ve only seen this method of construction used to the second level (undersubcommander, super-hyper-awesome, etc) the traditional names of small musical notes follow this pattern as well, with an eighth note being a “quaver,” a 16th a “semiquaver,” a 32nd being a “demisemiquaver,” a 64th note a “hemidemisemiquaver,” a 128th a “semihemidemisemiquaver,” (literally a half-half-half-half-quaver) and such ad infinitum

M-MOONS, or smoons, gotta go for something not clinical remember y'all are Cool Worlds. So give them a very Cool Worlds name. Being the best gives a lot of latitude, and you have earned extra. Love hearing more and more referencing you and your team. Should give you a lot of pride.

If sub moons are even slightly possible than I feel confident to say that they exist somewhere knowing how big the universe is.

Hey, could you do a video on rogue planets? Like is it possible a rogue planet could under perfect conditions support life or be terraformed?

Very good video, thank you :)

This dude is so ripped and badass looking. He's probably drowning in ... yeah lmao

Your videos are always the best I do receive a notification each time you post a new video. We will have regrets for things we did not participate in. Investments should always be on any creative man's heart for success in life and I'll advise you do a little glimpse of that on your next video,

My mind is blown🤯 knowing why Iapetus has equatorial ridge and knowing that we have developed a good theory for it.

Great video. One thing I've always wondered is why we haven't named our moon yet.

No, because then it becomes a three body problem and is chaotic and unstable. Sooner or later the smallest object collides with either of the bigger ones and is assimilated.

I call. them Moons, Mooons and Moooons lol

if Iapetus did in fact have a sub moon but later lost it, it might possibly still be within Jupiter's orbit, the best candidates for what might of been Iapetus's sub moon could be what we consider a small moon of Jupiter, especially one that is close to Iapetus

The idea give me a lot of information on how news can have moons this is a really cool subject I like Space by the way this is very cool I like it thank you for talking about it

Appreciate the well thought out video as always, although please don't call satellites "moons". The Moon is just that, it's the name it holds, but its still a satellite. Worse still is when people call these moonmoons! Yes, I am being pedantic, but dumbing down isn't what I have come to expect from this channel. As always, regardless, a great subject well discussed.

Pertaining to the rotations of the moon, The "early years" of earth rotation was about 6 hours and the moon was a lot closer and look a lot bigger to earth. The weather and tides must have been massive.

I'd wondered about this since I was a kid! I assumed, given the utter absence of any mention of "sub-moons," that some limit of comparative scale or orbital hierarchies was the obstructor--such that only two relationships were supportable: the sun/planet and planet/moon. Beyond that the necessary difference between the biggest and smallest of a three-body system disallowed a jump up or down in added orbits. But a ten-year-old no doubt missed a number of papers dismissing my juvenalia mira. Had I imagined Dr. Kipping's videos falling to Earth, I would have just waited for his answer.

In light of the richness of indigenous languages and cultures globally, I suggest adopting traditional names for the moon as designations for "Submoon" and "Subsubmoon": For the term "Submoon", we could choose "Marama" from Maori, "Jasy" from Guarani, "Olapa" from Maasai, or "Mun" from Bislama. For the term "Subsubmoon", we can use the same terms to maintain the hierarchy in naming. So, "Marama", "Jasy", "Olapa", or "Mun". By using these terms, we honor the indigenous cultures and languages from which they originate, incorporating their rich history and perspective into modern astronomical nomenclature.

I’ve heard the term subsatellite used to describe a sub-moon, A moonling or perhaps Daughter-satellite could also work as terms for it.

That's amazing, because in essence, what this means for the moon is that we can put a really sizable space station in its Hill sphere, and have it be stable for eons! That's a great prospect 😊

I'd love to see a detailed video on the mechanism of transferring the orbital moment between planets and moons. It's easy to say it has to be conserved but the ice skater has a direct controll over it's mass distribution. I doubt waves exert enough gravity to push the moon back so how does it slow down? Does the moon get a bulge from earth? And energy is lost to friction and radiated away? I saw one video on that but it did do a good job on explaining this. I feel like something has to be moving there and simple gravity strength oscillations from earth's waves are not enough, but maybe I'm wrong.

That’s a good question. Seeing how there’s TON-618 and Tres-2B, at this point almost anything could be possible

Yes - any object with mass can have another satellite. I remember reading in my TIME/LIFE - The Universe book - one astronomer once said the PLUTO couldn't have a moon. The more we discover about the Universe - the more we are amazed at what is out there...

I'd say the easiest would be to use a simple numerical naming system. A normal moon would be a 1st-degree moon, a moon of a moon a 2nd-degree moon and so on. That would also make planetes technically 0th-degree moons, which I find nifty. We could also find a new term/just use the word "planet" and consider moons the 2nd-degree planets. Maybe use "satellite" and consider stars to be our baseline? As in, stars are 0th-degree satellites orbiting the center of the galaxy, planets are 1st-degree, moons are 2nd-degree etc. but then a whole galaxy could be called a -1st degree satellite if it orbits something (I have no idea how galaxies move in relation to each other, so apologies of that doesn't make sense). I think adopting a simple system along the lines of what I described would be best.

I always searched for this.but no reponse until you did this!,thank you!

Very interesting. I often wondered weather there are natural but very small objects in the special zones that all planets have and which the new Webb space Telescope resides in.

I have played with simple orbital programs, but I never imagined such complexity. Good thing that I switched my major to engineering.

Going out on a whim, but I figure looking to how the planets formed could help with answering such questions. Since stars, planets, and any satellites all form from large clumps of mass, I think it may depend on density of that mass in certain areas, and how long it could take that material to form an actual core, or center. But what constitutes the “start” of these? Obviously, all mass has a gravitational pull, so after enough of that mass clumps together, it will start actively having an affect on other things around it, which at the start of a solar system will just be more randomly clumped mass, but still other stuff. Perhaps there’s a certain size of this “mass” that will have, to some affect, the rules for a planet. (Clearing the neighbor hood, etc) And start to actively pull in more and more mass around it, getting bigger and eventually a planet. So maybe solar systems with an incredible amount of mass away from the dead center, so it doesn’t get eaten up by the growing star, are the only systems capable of housing satellites with extra satellites around them, none the less those having even MORE around them. Would be crazy cool to see a moon with a moon tho, gonna end my odd rant here xD Edit: I’m adding more because yeah, back to what I was saying about positioning as I feel it’s more important than sheer density of mass. For as much mass that’s in the system, these planets and moons, and maybe even mini moons, (which I like more than sub moons, sue me lol) would have to form incredibly close to one another, and would each need to be… I’d probably say at least the size of Eris or Pluto, and for a mini moon to happen, you’d need the biggest one of these just close enough to the 1st moon to grab it inside its gravitational orbit, and then have that smaller moon (mini moon) be JUST close enough to the first moon to latch into its orbit, instead of the bigger planet. I say all of these would have to be small because I feel that if it were smaller bodies orbiting the bigger planet, it would immediately snatch both of them up just due to how much larger it’s gravitational pull is than the others.

12:00 If we have systems with sub-moons, it maybe best re-termed Primary/Secondary/Tertiary satalites

Interesting video ! It raises a question tho. If the moon is going away due to tidal forces, does the fact of having a mostly watery surface on earth makes the tidal effect stronger (since it mooves more) ? I bet the effect would be very tiny, but still, do liquid surface objects slow down faster than rocky one ? How about gazeous ones ?