Wiktionary
n. (context astronomy English) a very small body orbiting a planet, often as part of a ring.
Wikipedia
A moonlet, minor moon, minor natural satellite or minor satellite is a particularly small natural satellite orbiting a planet, dwarf planet or other minor planet. Three different types of small moons have been called moonlets:
- A belt of objects embedded in a planetary ring, as in Saturn's A Ring or S/2009 S 1 in the B Ring ( "propeller" moonlets) or in Saturn's F Ring.
- Occasionally for asteroid moons, such as the moons of 87 Sylvia.
- Subsatellites.
Usage examples of "moonlet".
Lady Mac, no one else could hit that moonlet, let alone its Lagrange point.
Now though, as it watched the starship curving over the moonlet, it knewunderstoodthe meaning of trepidation.
Working with a cunning she had never expected, it was severing each strand at the chosen moment that would toss its moonlet out toward the hive.
They would have to get very, very close to the mysterious little moonlet before the jets ran dry, or Jupiter would get them yet.
This gate opened on an artificial moonlet circling a gas giant at the outer edge of Amazon Eridani system.
The little moonlet was rising over the notch, a swiftly moving fleck of light.
Cind scrambled over the surface of the moonlet, pausing here and there to scan wreckage with the device.
The moonlet Cind had visited had been hollowed out as it was equipped with antenna, a buried shelter, power, and supplies.
She was heading for cover behind a pocked moonlet before they could sense her.
This moonlet had been the place for life, the work and dwelling place.
The actual instruments, the dishes and antennas, the telescopes and lidarscopes and radioscopes and nanoscopes, were all installed on the other moonlet, safely away from the vibration and radiation of anything alive.
Gweanvin, under the gravitational attraction of the moonlet, drifted slowly to the ground.
There was a slight jar when her shield screen banged into that of the semi-inert Lontastan, and a bruising jar when her impetus slammed both of them down on the rocky moonlet, with Marvis on the bottom.
The line seemed flimsy and fragile, strung as it was between spaceship and moonlet, two objects that floated, resting on no support, in empty three-dimensional space.
If any of their descendants survived they must be utterly transformed by time, she thought, as different from those who built this moonlet as I am from my mindless Mesozoic ancestors.