Talk:Inner moon

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Omission of Proteus[edit]

Hi, I notice that Proteus has not been included in the inventory of Neptune's inner satellites. This looks to be an omission − its origin is thought to be exactly the same as for the remaining Neptunian moons inward of Triton. Like the other smaller inner moons, it is thought to be a re-coalesced agregate from the remains of Neptune's original satellites which were smashed up in the period shortly after Triton's capture. The smashing up was due to strong perturbations from Triton stirring the system up, leading to inter-satellite collisions. Here is a reference for this: [1].

While i'm on this topic, all the Neptune satellites are an oddity in comparison with the rest of the "inners". E.g. unlike the other sets they are not thought to have coalesced along with the planet (at least not in their present form). Deuar 16:09, 28 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Saturn's inner satellites[edit]

By the criteria given in this article, wouldn't the Alcyonid moons Methone, Pallene, and Anthe count as inner satellites? They're very small, irregular, and have periods of just over 1 day -- and arguably orbit within Saturn's ring system, as Pallene seems itself to be associated with a ring.

It's true that they revolve outside the orbit of Mimas, but then Mimas is smaller than Proteus (listed here as an inner satellite of Neptune) and might well be considered an inner satellite itself. RandomCritic 15:45, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, indeed they might. What's not clear to me is 1) how to decide in a rational way and 2) whether that's particularly bad. The presence of these moons simply exposes the inherent vagueness of the term "inner satellite". It seems to have just been based on a up-to-now fortuitous coincidence that the size of satellites usually has a big jump towards large bodies as you go out from the planet. Turns out that this is all very well until you look too close with something like Cassini, when you start to see the small junk that flies around as well. I presume that Methone and friends are probably captured objects because they'd likely be blasted into pieces by incoming meteorites over a timescale of the Solar System's age, but I'm not 100% sure on that. If that's the case then some caveats regarding the possibly different histories of the very small bodies should be included in the article. Deuar 15:05, 29 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the trojan moons were already counterexamples. One might even count Hyperion as such, too. Double sharp (talk) 13:50, 8 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Mars's inner satellites[edit]

By the criteria given in this article, wouldn't the two moons of Mars also count as inner satellites? If they don't qualify, perhaps the article could mention why. Artipol (talk) 06:08, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Missing correlate[edit]

"Inner" moon, huh? O-kay... but shouldn't a reference to "inner moons" be contrasted at some point against "outer moons", or something similar? If there's sufficient reason to write up one sub-type of natural satellite, there's at least enough reason to mention (somewhere!) what distinguishes them from the rest of the super-type. KhyranLeander 18:13, 15 August 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Khyranleander (talk • contribs)