Is there such a thing as a gas moon?

Question

There are gas planets, can there be gas moons?

Answer 1

Great question!

I would suspect the answer is "no". Here's why:

Gases, by definition, consist of rapidly moving particles. If you try to collect together a bunch of gas with the mass equal to (say) the earth's moon, then one of two things would happen:
* The gas's self-gravity would cause it to shrink and condense, at the same time releasing a lot of heat, and then it would be a solid and no longer a gas; OR:
* If the gas were able to retain its thermal energy, the particles would be moving so fast that the self-gravity would be too small to keep the whole thing together.

That basically means that you can't have _small_ (moonlike) gaseous bodies that are held together by gravity.

You can still have large ones though (like Jupiter-sized). Can those be moons?

I guess you could have a Neptune-sized "moon" orbiting a planet that was 10 times Neptune's size. However, people would be likely to classify that as a "double planet" rather than a moon orbiting a planet.

Answer 2

They do replace shape, yet they're so large and so far-off that it takes years or in line with probability centuries to make certain the variations. The Crab Nebula has visibly replaced by using fact it substitute into first stated in 1731. And the Eagle Nebula has some very small variations that are in undemanding words huge with useful telescopes (the variations are interior the small information). Scientists have confidence that the Pillars of creation are being eroded so straight away via making use of heat stars embedded interior the nebula that they'd right be long previous indoors of a few centuries.

Answer 3

a gaseous moon could exist, as any gaseous planet

Answer 4

Maybe, but I do't think that anyone has found one yet.

Answer 5

the is not one in our solar system, but maybe somewhere out there.