Terrestrial Moons
Why Worldbuilding Stack Exchange recommends it
Worldbuilding Stack Exchange users link it as a reference for the orbital mechanics and physics of moons when answering or framing questions about moon systems, tidal locking and habitable moons.
Recommended by 3 people across 3 different months, 2016 to 2020.
What it is
An Artifexian worldbuilding episode on designing moons for terrestrial planets, covering moon composition, density, mass, surface gravity, Hill sphere, Roche limit and orbital period, with the equations listed in the description. It ends with the idea of horseshoe habitable moons and includes two voiceover corrections noted in the description.
What people said
Recommends TrEs-2b · 2016-05 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “Seasons and Day/Night Cycles on Horseshoe Habitable Worlds?”
In the latest Artifexian video [this video] , he talked about terrestrial moons, bringing up great ways they could and would exist. But the video ended with an interesting concept, Horseshoe Habitable Moons. From Wikipedia: [LINK] A horseshoe orbit is a type of co-orbital motion of a small orbiting body relative to a larger orbiting body (such as Earth). The orbital period of the smaller body is very nearly the same as for the larger body, and its path appears to have a horseshoe shape in a rotating reference frame as viewed from the larger object. The loop is not closed but will drift forward or backward slightly each time, so that the point it circles will appear to move smoothly along the larg
Recommends Atlas the Worldbuilder · 2016-09 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “How long would a day be on two tidally locked earth sized habitable planets?”
Depends on the mass of the planets and the speed of the orbit. The larger the companion body, the more their gravitational pull will affect how long the days last. Essentially, a day and a "month" would last the same length for equal-sized tidally locked bodies. For more info, I'd recommend checking out this video [this video] about terrestrial moons; they briefly cover orbital mechanics, and it can also apply to co-orbital bodies.
Recommends Luke · 2020-01 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “Would tidal acceleration mean doom for this system?”
I'd say that Tidal Recession is one of the LEAST of the effects moving the moons around. Mars sized is a very big moon, even for a super Earth. It would be big for a gas giant. None of our planets have moons anywhere close to that size. With only 1 mars-moon, the super earth would essentially be in a binary system. Adding more moons would likely be unstable. The moons would eventually collide, or expel each other until only one moon remains. Orbital interactions between different moons would be much, much bigger than tidal effects. The only chance of keeping all the moons in nice, stable orbits is for them to be in some sort of self-reinforcing resonance. Jupiter's 4 major moons all have suc
Cites Atlas the Worldbuilder · 2016-09 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “Timekeeping Systems on a Habitable Moon”
Ok, this is take two. Hopefully this is specific enough. I have a link to the original question here [LINK] . And for those of you eager to see my sources for this, I'll link two videos here from the YouTube Channel Artifexian . Worldbuilding: Terresstrial Moons [this video] Worldbuilding: Gas Giant Moon Systems and Habitable Moons [LINK] I have a 6-planet solar system (only three planets have been fleshed out so far), with a purple gas giant in the Habitable zone. It has 3 Earth-ish sized moons: one small ice-covered ocean moon (like Europa), one swampy rainforest moon (like Endor/Dagobah), and one Desert moon with 60% of its surface covered in dry land. The desert moon's 'year' is 147 Earth day