Superearth Moon

More of my astronomical and space travel art can be seen in my DA "Space Art" gallery:

lexlothor.deviantart.com/galle…


Astronomers have only just begun to scratch at the surface of the diversity of alien worlds.
True binary gas giants are theoretically possible. However they are probably very rare. This is due to the manner in which any large body beyond the snowline of a nascent star system will gobble up all surrounding gas and dust out of a planetary accretion disc and deny it to any nearby sibling. I have depicted such a binary pair previously.



However, it may be possible for a very large moon to accrete in orbit about a gas giant. I our Solar System the largest moon in proportion to the mass of its parent gas giant is Saturn's moon Titan. Titan is as large as the planet Mercury. Now imagine a moon many times the mass of the Earth in orbit about a Jupiter-sized giant.

Here I have depicted a "superearth" ten times the mass of our own world as the moon of an extrasolar jovian. It is so big that the common barycenter of the system although still within the gas giant is off centered from its core. This results in both components being slightly egg shaped.

I have added a second Venus-sized moon that safely orbits about the common gravitational center of the major components.

art & text (c) John P. Alexander

2.5" x 3.5" art card rendered in Prismacolor pencils, Tombow markers and acrylics.