General Discussions

[LP]

Moon Scientists can call them whatever they like.
We've already established scientists are not the font of all wisdom and are still learning.

Big M =Moon-Earth's one
Little m=moon

National Geographic
"A moon is an object that orbits a planet or something else that is not a star. Besides planets, moons can circle dwarf planets, large asteroids, and other bodies. Objects that orbit other objects are also called satellites, so moons are sometimes called natural satellites. People have launched many artificial satellites into orbit around Earth, but these are not considered moons."

So then I presume the must be a definition of when "a satellite" becomes "a moon", care to share, moons as a subset of satellites I presume?

The ambiguity is in the language not in the science, there are rules and definitions set by the Planetary Society and the IAU, they do not get used by mainstream media and publishing because editors think they are too confusing, the editors think the general public isn't apparently smart enough to deal with it, so press releases and announcements get dumbed down.

Because those definitions change with new knowledge, the counts can change accordingly, a bit like when a new species is found, we are finding new species every day faster than we find new sexualities apparently! :o

I surveyed the Astrophysics archives and found about 6:1 "satellite" versus "moon", most references to moon appear in the abstracts for reasons already discussed.