Do smaller moons orbit there planets faster than large moons?

Answer 1

Although the size of the moon has no effect whatsoever, if it is closer then it must go faster or it will crash into the planet. Not quite. It appears to go faster because it has a tighter orbit and therefore less distance to travel than a larger moon further away, like the inside of a racetrack is a shorter distance than the outside. The same is true of planets orbiting a star, but they are all moving at a similar speed.

Answer 2

Yes it does.

One of Kepler's "laws" is the fact that the line from the sun to the planet 'sweeps out' equal areas in equal time intervals. In order to do that, the line has to sweep faster when it's shorter.

Kepler came up with his "laws" based on many years of observing the motions of the planets. But Kepler's "laws" can be derived mathematically from Newton's "laws" of gravitation and motion, which came long after Kepler.

Answer 3

Not entirely. Earth has 1 moon, Saturn and Jupiter have over 60 each, but Mars has two, and even tiny Pluto has five.

But in general, more massive planets will normally have more moons. But there's a relationship between the size of the planet and the sizes of the moons; if the moon is relatively large compared to the size of the planet, multiple moons can disturb each other's orbits. So in the Earth-Moon system, with the Moon's mass being a significant percentage of the mass of the Earth, there are very few points of gravitational stability in which another large moon might orbit.

Giant Jupiter, on the other hand, is big enough to have four large moons, and scores of smaller ones, without interfering with each other.

The planet Venus, which is very nearly the mass of the Earth, has no moons at all. It's likely that if it HAD a large moon, it wouldn't be as forbidding and inhospitable to terrestrial life as it is.

Comment: you are right about Mars of course, even though its moons are tiny.

You can't have Pluto as a planet though.

Answer 4

Yes, smaller moons orbit their planets faster than larger moons due to their lower gravitational influence from the planet. This is described by Kepler's third law of planetary motion, which states that the orbital period of a moon is inversely proportional to the square root of its distance from the planet.

Answer 5

It's not the moon's size, but its distance away from the planet that counts. The closer to the planet, the faster the orbital velocity.

Answer 6

yes because they are smaller which allows it to move faster

Answer 7

Not really. Larger planets tend to have more moons than smaller ones, but it is not a hard-and-fast rule.