Can Moons Have Moons?

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’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 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'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.

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.

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!

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

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

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