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Damarian, the world I'm building, is the largest moon of its gas giant planet, Checuti. Damarian's diameter is 19,113 km, but its gravity is nearly the same as Earth's (It' largely made out of a material denser than water, magnetic, and freezes well above a temperature habitable for the average Earth-like life form).

I'd like to know, roughly, how long Damarian's orbit around Checuti should be. This means that Damarian won't get torn apart by the Roche limit, won't fly out of the system, and is able to be habitable long enough for life to form without all the water freezing or boiling. I'll be using the result for timekeeping (For example, if the best result is about a week, Damarian weeks will be make by calculating the orbital period). Damarian has 100 other sister moons, all much, much, much smaller (More among the lines of Solar System moons).

There are also 4 stars, two G, 1 K, and 1 M, and I'm debating on whether I should have Checuti orbit the K or one of the G stars. The fact that Damarian is in a four-star system (Quadranary?) should not affect answers, nor should you use the star type as inspiration (Unless you want to recommend K or G type, due to Damarian's year being 384 days long, 385 on leap years every 4 years).

Masses of everything else, on behalf of highly esteemed member of Worldbuilding SE:

  • Stars: M type star is about 0.3 solar mass, K type star is roughly 0.65 solar mass, G type star #1 is 0.95 solar mass, and G type star #2 is 1.05 solar mass.

  • Planet: Checuti is about 25% larger than Jupiter (Both mass and diameter is best, but at least diameter), and has a ring system about 1.35 times as large as Saturn's.

All I want is a range of km from the closest distance to the most distance for Damarian to orbit, along with how long the orbital period would be (In Earth time).

The Darke Lorde
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  • Without information on the masses of the other bodies (the main planet and the stars), together with the distances from the stars, we cannot answer this – L.Dutch May 20 '21 at 17:15
  • A few things. 1. Gas giants don't really get much bigger then Jupiter in terms of volume. The higher gravity simply compresses the mass ever tighter. There is the exception of puffy hot Jupiter's, but these expand due to enormous solar and tidal heating. Make the gas giant more massive, though, that gives your more space for your moon system. Or, if up to 13.8 times the mass of Jupiter doesn't give you the right Hill Sphere, Go for a brown dwarf. A purple or magenta parent will be interesting. Brown dwarfs can have up to 80 Jupiter masses. – TheDyingOfLight May 21 '21 at 17:35
  • The limiting factor is going to be tidal heating. Close in you'll get a tidal Venus (lava oceans or vulcanic hellscape under a thick CO2 atmosphere), vulcanic activity will remain intense in any case. Well, given that it is possible in the first place as there are theories that super-earths might be unable to have vulcanism while others think it might be more intense (this might not scale linearly with planetary mass).
  • – TheDyingOfLight May 21 '21 at 17:48
  • You won't get plate tectonics. The higher heat budget (even when we ignore tidal heating and focus of gravitational/primordial heat as well as on radiogenic heat) will probably result in a heat pipe stagnent lid setup. The food news are that this means you will get a functioning carbon silicate cycle. The bad news are that you will face regular flood vulcanism and won't get any andesitic lava, meaning no mountains or continental plates. This means that you planet will only have a few kilometers between its highest and lowest point.
  • – TheDyingOfLight May 21 '21 at 17:53