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Moons Can Have Their Own Moons and They Could Be Called Moonmoons (atlasobscura.com)
Two astronomers have asked a question for the ages: Can moons have moons? The delightful, if theoretical, answer is: Yes -- yes, they can. Sarah Laskow, writing for Atlas Obscura: As Gizmodo reports, this particular scientific inquiry began with a question from Juna Kollmeier's son. Kollemeier, who works at the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, recruited Sean Raymond, of the University of Bordeaux, to help her answer the question. In a paper posted on arXiv [PDF], they lay out their case that moons can have moons. The conditions have to be right -- the primary moon has to be big enough and far away enough from the planet it's orbiting for the smaller, secondary moon to survive. But, even given these caveats, they found that moons in our very own solar system could theoretically have their own smaller moons. Two of Saturn's moons and one of Jupiter's are candidates. So is our favorite moon -- the Earth's moon.
[...] One of the great challenges of talking about recursive places is deciding what call them. The prefix "sub-" can do a lot of work here: We can islands within islands "subislands," and in the arXiv paper, Kollmeier and Raymond call a moon's moon a "submoon." But there are other options. New Scientist notes that "moonmoon" has been put forth as a name for a moon's moon. For those of us who are less than fluent in meme culture: This is a reference to Moon Moon, sometimes described as the internet's derpiest wolf. Moon Moon was born in 2013, from a werewolf name generator, and soon started frolicking across Tumblr and all other places memes can be found.
[...] One of the great challenges of talking about recursive places is deciding what call them. The prefix "sub-" can do a lot of work here: We can islands within islands "subislands," and in the arXiv paper, Kollmeier and Raymond call a moon's moon a "submoon." But there are other options. New Scientist notes that "moonmoon" has been put forth as a name for a moon's moon. For those of us who are less than fluent in meme culture: This is a reference to Moon Moon, sometimes described as the internet's derpiest wolf. Moon Moon was born in 2013, from a werewolf name generator, and soon started frolicking across Tumblr and all other places memes can be found.
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Namaste
...no.
Palaces, barricades, threats, meet promises
Don't astronomers usually refer to them as satellites? I always though "moon" was the name of the Earth's satellite, specifically.
Surely these should be meta moons?
There is only one Moon, the satellite circling around the planet Earth. All other astronomical object we refer to as moons are satellites. And no, the electronical satellites we bring into orbit are actually called 'artifical satellites'. So, moomoons makes no sense at all.
It doesn't have to be like this. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.
Babies can later have their own babies and they could be called BabyBabies.
They say "Pie Arrrrrr Squared!" whenever they see a moon moon, because that's the custom.
Orbit like a Pirate Day.
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It should be mormoons. They're the ones that have multiple satelwifes
moomins?
They live in Norway.
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I swear one of my stoned physicist friends said something similar about a second order lunar body.
dammit
...because most of them don't know enough Latin.
Instead of Moonmoon, they could call them luna lunae, which means, "moon of moon."
This could give them endless opportunities for singing a rock classic.
Luna lunae
Whoa baby
Sayin, me gotta go
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah....
Finding God in a Dog
The question itself reminds me of the first two lines of Augustus De Morgan's poem Siphonaptera:
Big fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so, ad infinitum.
And the great fleas, themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on;
While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.
(All four lines quoted here, because, of course they are ... )
Check out my novel.
Or moonies, or moonites?!
That satellites orbiting satellites orbiting satellites be called "moonmoonmoons"?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
We already have a generic name for a thing that orbits another thing and it's 'satellite'.
We've had the terms 'moon' and 'sun' and 'stars' and 'planets' long before we understood orbital mechanics, and it's useful to have distinct names for things we refer to often.
But would 'moonmoon' actually convey any useful information, would it make understanding what another person is saying clearer?
Sounds to me like an attempt to add unnecessary complexity that won't be useful for actual professional discussion and would be irrelevant for the lay person beyond serving as a piece of amusing trivia.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
And they could be called ballsballs
"That's no moonmoon!"
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
I guarantee Moony McMoonface will come up at some point. Probably already has.
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
+1 (would have been +2 if it ended with "...and so on, ad infinitum..." but I repeat myself
nothing to see here - move along
Obviously the official name should be "Death Stars" because when you look at a satellite in orbit around another satellite, you can clearly see "that's no moon."
Also, agreed, "moonmoon" is absurd.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
The prefix "sub-" can do a lot of work here: We can islands within islands "subislands,"
We can? I'm glad.
Why do so many people have a blind spot when it comes to verbs? "I accidentally the whole planet".
"I shall call him... Mini-moon!"
Moon Moons are huskies (the dogs). Not moons.
Bloomberg is reporting that Pluto is a planet made in China.
Next up, recursive Uranus jokes, with Beowulf clusters of turtles all the way down.
Table-ized A.I.
This was settled a long time ago. Everyone knows it's a Space Station.
...that's no moon?
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Dwarf planet? DWARF planet? How planetist of you! They prefer to be called differently massed planets, you bigot...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
More like Finland.
I can't be the only person to consider prime notation like in calculus for derivatives, eg moon, moon', moon'', etc.
You missed such a perfect chance to type 'moronmoron'.
At least the appers and luddites and even APK refer to the topic of a given article. You're not good at this trolling thing.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
...when he created the character of Major Major Major Major
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Gravitational anomalies slightly distorting the orbits of some Lunar Orbiters led to the discovery of mass concentrations (dubbed mascons) beneath the lunar surface caused by large impacting bodies at some remote time in the past. These anomalies are significant enough to cause a lunar orbit to change significantly over the course of several days.
Let us call it a "snark". After all, scientists tend to come up with whimsical names when they run out of rational alternatives. For example: after coining "proton", "neutron" and "electron", physicists moved on to "quark" as an obscure reference to a James Joyce novel, followed by the "up", "down", "strange", "charm", "bottom" and "top" monikers, which are even more nonsense.
"Snark" has a similar whimsical literary pedigree. It was the titular character in a Lewis Carroll poem - a creature that was hunted, but was itself indescribable. "Snark" was also the name of a character in a sci-fi novel: an extra-terrestrial intelligence, like the Clarke's Monolith, watching for developing intelligence in our solar system. More to the point, the snark in that novel spent some time orbiting our own Moon
Really does make my day richer, knowing that I can run around the city yelling "I have moonmoons!" and have it actually mean something.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
Can now have hemorrhoids?
I thought they lived in the realm of Faerie ...
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As in "the cow jumped over the moon"
A man spends the first half of his life accumulating stuff, the second trying to get rid of it all.