Making a slow orbit around a large gas giant

First of all, this website is a dream come true. I'm a total sucker for this stuff.

Secondly, I love astronomy and worldbuilding, and lately, I've been thinking of a hypothetical situation, and was wondering if such a thing was actually possible.

A planet orbits a gas giant. Let's say (for reference's sake) the gas giant is Jupiter, and the planet is Earth. Earth is tidally locked to the gas giant, and has a rotational period of exactly one year. However, let's say it also orbits around Jupiter in exactly one year as well, which means that the planet is cooked on its surface for a while and then vanishes into total freezing darkness behind Jupiter every 6 months, give or take.

This itself is doable. However, would it be possible if Earth was still located rather close to Jupiter, in a way for Jupiter to still dominate the sky (yes, I know that's not Jupiter)?

Of course, it depends on where you're standing on hypothetical Earth to see hypothetical Jupiter, but in this case, we're standing in the right place to expect a giant planet to cover most of our sky. But gas giants' moons orbit around them incredibly fast because they're so close and they have such a strong gravitational pull, which creates a problem, because the ideal orbit here is a slow trip around.

Would other factors be able to slow down the planet's course around this imaginary gas giant and create this situation, such as other moons or planets, size of the planets in question, density of either planey, rings around the gas giant, etc., without the planet being pulled into this gas giant?

We can ignore the more technical things, like the radiation belt around gas giants and whatnot. The most basic question is if an orbit such as this is feasible. I'm asking for a world that's not Jupiter or Earth, so anything goes if it makes it possible- as long as a big gas giant has a moon.

I've ran this through my head a lot, searched for answers, and even bought and messed around in Universe Simulator 2 a little (but it's more fun to blow up planets), and still haven't been able to come up with much of a solution. I'd hope that with the right blend of factors, this would be possible, but I'm not too sure on how this could play out.

posted over 7 years ago

elciott‭

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