Re: CONCULTURE: First thoughts on Ayeri calendar system

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>>3-body systems are chaotic and hence (in the general case) not stable.
>>Generally, the smallest of the three bodies ends up either hitting
>>something or getting flung away.  One _can_ have a reasonably stable
>>system if either:
>>* There is one huge body with much smaller bodies orbiting it. (e.g. the
>>solar system)  Both  moons would be too small to be easily seen.
>>* two bodies orbit each other closely with one much further away. (e.g.
>>the sun-moon-earth system)  Either one moon would be too small/far away
>>to be easily seen, or the moons would form a pair, and hence stay close
>>to one another in the sky (interesting but not what you are describing).
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 The Earth actually has two moons, or at least you can count two: for
quite a while now an ex-asteroid (whose name I forget) that's barely
visible without a telescope has been orbiting, along with the big one. I
guess if you widen the definition of moon then we have more than three
since there are lots of satellites and bits of junk in orbit. But as has
already been said the important thing is for most of these mass of
object << mass of Earth. The moon is so big that it actually causes the
Earth to circle and wobble quite a bit as it orbits, although they don't
orbit each other to the same extent as Pluto and Charon. Pluto is so
small though that it's a dubious planet at best.

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