Moon atmospheres

Urbanski101

Urbanski101
I have a quick question.

I see many small moons that you can't land on due to the moon having an atmosphere. I came across a moon orbiting a gas giant 494km in radius, 0.0002 earth masses.

This got me wondering, is it possible for such a small moon/stellar object to have a stable atmosphere?

Surely there is not enough gravity to hold the atmosphere in place?

I'm sure there are even smaller moons/stellar objects that have atmospheres in ED, I've not really researched it but it did get me thinking.
 

mtt9999 [Parabolus]

mtt9999 [Parabolus]
There are many planets and moons I have come across that have no atmosphere and can't be landed on for some reason. I don't know.

This doesn't give an answer to your question, but thought I would share. However my guess is that you are correct that there is not enough Gravity for an atmosphere.
 
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Sapyx

Sapyx
I assume it's an extrapolation from Titan.

Titan is a moon of Saturn. It's quite large for a moon, yet it's still not much bigger than our own moon. Yet, it has an atmosphere that's even thicker and denser than the atmosphere of Earth.

Titan proves that you don't need to have much gravity to have a world that has an atmosphere. It's not very probable (There is only one Titan-class moon in our solar system, and thousands of atmosphere-less ones) but it is possible. And if something is possible, then the stellar forge should be able to generate it.
 

Iskariot

Iskariot
Urbanski101 said:
I have a quick question.

I see many small moons that you can't land on due to the moon having an atmosphere. I came across a moon orbiting a gas giant 494km in radius, 0.0002 earth masses.

This got me wondering, is it possible for such a small moon/stellar object to have a stable atmosphere?

Surely there is not enough gravity to hold the atmosphere in place?

I'm sure there are even smaller moons/stellar objects that have atmospheres in ED, I've not really researched it but it did get me thinking.
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There are several astronomers and cosmologists playing ED who are also active on the forums sometimes.
I hope one of them notices your thread.

I suppose that FD is continuously tweaking and improving the PG of the Stellar Forge.
If there are errors they will want to iron them out.

I came across this:

http://passporttoknowledge.com/lfm/...ions_for_a_planet_to_retain_an_atmosphere.txt
 

marx

marx
Iskariot said:
I suppose that FD is continuously tweaking and improving the PG of the Stellar Forge.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, that does not appear to be the case. The Stellar Forge was only changed two times so far: one was with 2.0, the launch of Horizons, and it was changed for barren planets only. (That obviously had to be done.) The other was much earlier, back in 1.1 I believe? Then, planet classifications were updated, but their characteristics remained the same. Most notably, Earth-like worlds had to conform to stricter criteria, and those that didn't were re-classified as water worlds. But the bodies themselves were the same.

That said, once Frontier implements atmospheric flights (even to barren planets only), it's quite likely that atmospheres will be changed too. For now, we don't even know how much gas there is around specific bodies, only the atmospheric composition and surface pressure. For example, the height of the atmosphere is unknown.
 

iain666

iain666
There's a limit to how much the stellar forge can change without known systems coming out differently. If they cross that threshold then it's either run two forges (could get very odd results and make working out how it works impossible) or wipe the existing exploration database - all tags and visible system maps gone, can you imagine the howls of outrage?

That could well be why the detail of things we can't interact with yet, like atmospheres, is so scant currently - it allows more latitude for fiddling with it as they implement the interactions.
 

Jackie Silver

Jackie Silver
It's possible to have thin atmospheres from outgassing, or to have temporary atmospheres that freeze out when it's too cold. Hmm. I was going to say, that's what Pluto does, but looking it up it seems that New Horizons suggests it keeps its atmosphere all the time.

Not sure offhand about smaller moons (of the ~500km radius mark) with atmospheres in the solar system, I'll have a look.
(e.t.a. Enceladus is the smallest known moon with an atmosphere at ~250 km radius, that's down to gas from cryovolcanoes aiui., so it's an -ish atmosphere. :) )
 
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