6
This is not possible because satellites in different orbits will necessarily have different periods. They will all move across the sky in different speeds, so they will catch up to each other every now and then.
Having multiple satellites in the same orbit is complicated - such arrangements are not stable on a geological timescale, and are too improbable to ...
6
This page lays out why planets and moons have the atmospheres that they do.
http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/ast121/lectures/lec14.html
Combining the variables of escape velocity (mass, radius of planet)
and surface temperature (distance from Sun plus effects of atmosphere
heating) produces the following diagram. For key elements, lines are
draw to show where ...
4
Yes
It will not work from every spot on the planets surface, and you may catch glimpses of the other moons, but at least at the equator and tropics it should be possible.
The moon I've used for this is smaller than our current moon, at 5000 metric tons. It comes much closer than our current moon, so should be about as visually noticable.
Assuming Earth-...
3
You're going to need:
small, very faint moons that cannot be seen during the daytime. What we're counting on is that these small, dim moons tend to get lost in the morning/evening glare in their crescent phases.
Some sort of regular orbital perturbation that advances the line of apsides of the moons precesses with the same period as the planet, so that the ...
2
The smallest known moons in the solar system are very tiny compared to their planets.
For example, A moon one kilometer in diameter could orbit a gas giant whose rocky core - not counting the thick layers of atmospehre - is 10,000 kilometers in diameter and thus has a volume and mass 1,000,000,000,000 times as great as the moon.
In fact, if this list is ...
2
Assuming the moon stays the same size:
Total Solar eclipse before:
Total Solar eclipse after:
Pardon my lack of photoshop, those edges should be blurred.
There will be more solar eclipses - considerably more. The moon takes up about 3.5 more area of the sky, and moves about ~3 times as fast. Back of envelope astronomy says we'll go from 1-2 partial solar ...
1
Yes ... I think.
Four full moons a year means a period of approximately 91 days. We know that Kepler's Third Law states T^2 / R^3 = constant for any given system, so we can calculate approximately the orbital radius of the moonlet by knowing that the Moon, orbiting with R=380,000 km in the same Earth system, has T=28 days.
This gives us that R^3 = (91/28)^2 *...
1
My answer to this question:
https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/169999/what-kind-of-lunar-orbit-would-cause-a-total-solar-eclipse-to-happen-once-a-day/170047#170047[1]
May help:
Another possibility is having a planet with many moons of almost totally identical size which are equally spaced in a ring around the planet. The moons all share the ...
1
Maaaybe
It would require all seven moons to share the same orbit, which probably isn't a stable configuration and would have to be artificially made - there's practically zero chance that it would occur naturally. Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that some advanced alien race made it so in the very near past, geologically speaking, and maybe added ...
1
Suppose the orbital period of the moon were exactly equal to the orbital spin of the planet. In such a case, the moon would always orbit exactly over the same spot on the planet, day and night. It would always be seen on one side of the planet, never seen on the other side of the planet, and in the same place both 'day' and 'night'. Now, slightly slow down ...
1
I do not believe this is possible. Assuming a 24 hour orbital period for the planet and 7 day period for the Moons.
In a single night an observer would be able to see roughly half a hemisphere, so on average half of the moons should be visible.
1
Well first of all it depends on the viewpoint. Is this just from one side of the planet, or is it from every point? If it is just one side we and the moons have an elliptical orbit then yes. Imagine 7 moons that all have a very elliptical orbit and circle the planet once every week. On the side of the ellipse that is furthest from the planet they move slowly....
1
A bit late to the party but I thought that this might help. Many years ago I got this wonderful app on my iPad called Exoplanet, which lists every exoplanet found so far, along with its known physical characteristics. I filtered this list to include only planets in the habitable zone and the sorted it by size. It has literally hundreds of planets Saturn-...
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