Re: Some Questions and answers on life on Atys and roleplaying
Posted: Mon Sep 04, 2006 3:24 am
I took some time to check out the skies today. I noticed some things:
1. The sun appears to get brighter and dimmer with day and night. Day and night are a factor of this sun's apparent fluctuations in brightness, and not a factor of Atys's axial rotation.
2. The sun doesn't appear to move in the sky. The same side of Atys faces the sun all the time.
3The stars move quite quickly behind the sun, indicating that the sun is extremely small and close to Atys - either that or Atys is revolving around the sun extremely rapidly. But even if the latter was the case, Atys would still need to be extremely close to the sun in order to stay within its orbit. So Atys's star must be extremely small (smaller than Earth's moon) and very close to Atys (as close as Earth's moon). The speed at which the stars move indicates that, unlike Earth, the seasons have nothing to do with Atys's orientation to the sun. Instead they may be caused by seasonal heating and cooling of the sun (on a different - longer - schedule than its daily brightening and fading), long-term weather systems on Atys, internal heating and cooling of Atys's core, the influence of the ringed planet (this is a very good possibility), or some other factor.
4. The planet with the rings moves at a slightly different pace than the stars behind it. The rings are at almost 90 degrees to the plane of rotation of the stars. I will be interested to find out if the ringed planet obscures the sun or not. As it is, it should technically NOT obscure the sun, as it seems to me that the ringed planet must be a further distance away from Atys than the sun is. I.e. we're talking about a solar system where Atys and its tiny sun both rotate around a massive ringed giant.
Here's my theory:
Atys's sun is artificial - a sort of massive moon-sized fusion reactor set up by some super-high-tech race to make Atys habitable. Atys and this artificial sun revolve around each other as the Earth and its moon do. As our moon always faces the Earth so Atys always faces its sun. Atys and the sun both revolve around the ringed planet as the Earth and its moon revolve around the sun. The ringed planet (not the sun) causes summer and winter on Atys due to an elliptical orbit that causes Atys to be heated up when it gets nearer the ringed planet, just as Jupiter heats up its moons.
So Atys's star system is really a planetary system - perhaps it all orbits some distant black hole.
Anyway, this seems the most likely explanation to me.
1. The sun appears to get brighter and dimmer with day and night. Day and night are a factor of this sun's apparent fluctuations in brightness, and not a factor of Atys's axial rotation.
2. The sun doesn't appear to move in the sky. The same side of Atys faces the sun all the time.
3The stars move quite quickly behind the sun, indicating that the sun is extremely small and close to Atys - either that or Atys is revolving around the sun extremely rapidly. But even if the latter was the case, Atys would still need to be extremely close to the sun in order to stay within its orbit. So Atys's star must be extremely small (smaller than Earth's moon) and very close to Atys (as close as Earth's moon). The speed at which the stars move indicates that, unlike Earth, the seasons have nothing to do with Atys's orientation to the sun. Instead they may be caused by seasonal heating and cooling of the sun (on a different - longer - schedule than its daily brightening and fading), long-term weather systems on Atys, internal heating and cooling of Atys's core, the influence of the ringed planet (this is a very good possibility), or some other factor.
4. The planet with the rings moves at a slightly different pace than the stars behind it. The rings are at almost 90 degrees to the plane of rotation of the stars. I will be interested to find out if the ringed planet obscures the sun or not. As it is, it should technically NOT obscure the sun, as it seems to me that the ringed planet must be a further distance away from Atys than the sun is. I.e. we're talking about a solar system where Atys and its tiny sun both rotate around a massive ringed giant.
Here's my theory:
Atys's sun is artificial - a sort of massive moon-sized fusion reactor set up by some super-high-tech race to make Atys habitable. Atys and this artificial sun revolve around each other as the Earth and its moon do. As our moon always faces the Earth so Atys always faces its sun. Atys and the sun both revolve around the ringed planet as the Earth and its moon revolve around the sun. The ringed planet (not the sun) causes summer and winter on Atys due to an elliptical orbit that causes Atys to be heated up when it gets nearer the ringed planet, just as Jupiter heats up its moons.
So Atys's star system is really a planetary system - perhaps it all orbits some distant black hole.
Anyway, this seems the most likely explanation to me.