Posts tagged moons
For story purposes, I am building a world where all life exists on the moon of a non-habitable planet (the moon is not tidally locked). How can I explain this in a convincing and mostly scientific ...
I am aware that there are a lot of answers explaining the fundamentals of a tidally locked "Earth-like" moon around a giant gas planet. For example this one: Habitable moon of a gas giant: working ...
In my fictional setting, the planet that people live on, called "Nearth" has one smallish very dark moon close in, and a large moon farther off with a very high albedo. Nearth is exactly the same...
There exist numerous theories on why the Moon lacks a layer of air if any, however the main culprits are gravity and the lack of Geo-dynamo simply put the Moon does not have the necessary mass nor ...
I was thinking of adding rings to my planet and I wanted to give them a proper origin, so I thought about getting rid of the moon closest to the planet since I would still have one and it could mak...
I'm currently writing about an Earth sized planet that is 33% water and has 4 moons all the same size as our moon. All moons are 243,000 miles from the planet's surface and the planet takes 392 day...
So, I'm developing a world for my fantasy setting, but I thought it'd be neat if this particular world had a nebula visible in its night sky. (So, it might not be a nebula like the kind we have in...
(Not entirely sure if this is the right place to ask this but hopefully I'm right!) I'm writing a novel and the planet this novel takes place on has two, twin moons of approximately the same size....
Background: I have an icy moon on a collision course with my fantasy world. Mages on this world have the ability to slow the speed of the moon gradually. I want them to use this power to lock the m...
So, imagine a team of space marines, fighting some sort of space bug zombies on a planet's moon. Things are going pretty bad for them, and the last surviving protagonists are running for their live...
Imagine if the Moon had its own moon. A moon (likely an asteroid) that lies within the Moon's Hill Sphere. I have read elsewhere about the fate of such a moon. Over time due to the Moon being tidal...
For story reasons, I need my mages to convert a moon on a collision course with their planet into a ring around the planet. The only thing they can do is hold the moon still. They can't do so indef...
What additional difficulties might the inhabitants of a gas giant moon face when attempting to launch spacecraft beyond their moon's orbit, especially beyond the planetary system? I presume that th...
My planet, is roughly as big as Earth, but has two moons. The first moon, Luna, is essentially the same as Earth's moon, but the second, much, much smaller moon, Selene, actually orbits Luna. Sele...
I'm working on creating a world with three moons, all with different sizes and different orbits. I'm wondering what effects this would have. How would the tides be affected, obviously, but also wou...
Consider a planet identical to Earth except that it has no moon. How long is the complete day-night cycle on this planet? I've heard that having no moon would speed up the planet's rotation, resu...
In honour of the full moon an odd moon question for you all. The idea is to create a situation in which the inhabitants of a world believe utterly that the moon only exists at night. I'd also like...
I was wondering if two bodies could be physically connected to each other such as the ones in the art I have attached. Is there any realism to it? Original art by Dave Melvin
I've been searching for hours, and most formulas I can find use complex/imaginary numbers or variables that I don't know or can't find out (such as the imaginary part of the planet's love number, w...
I'm writing a short story that takes place on an imaginary planet that is 88% ocean. The planet has two moons and one continent that is regularly flooded under 500 to 1500 feet of water. The tides ...
There are various questions about the stability of multiple moons, how they affect tides and so on, but I don't think this one has been covered here: If my planet has two moons, assuming they have...
A habitable planet with multiple moons, only one of which is tidally locked to the planet: is this general scenario possible? I understand that tidal locking takes a very long time to happen. So ...
Will be possible in the far future to use megascale engineering to create an artificial hollow moon to give Earth a big moon in the sky like in billion years ago? Since it would be hollow, it would...
In a world I am building, I would like to have the moon change color when seen from the planet's surface as it goes through its phases (e.g., the crescent after new moon is blood red, a quarter moo...
For a complex world-building scenario I want a habitable moon orbiting a habitable earth-like planet. The habitable moon should allow for flora, fauna and landscape as similar to earth as possible....
Say I have a moon orbiting a planet. Due to tidal locking, if we model the moon as a sphere, there exists an axis which passes through the center of the moon which is always pointed toward the cent...
I'm trying to "build" a world in which the moon is always visible at night, and only at night, to the majority of areas on that world. I've been told that an L2 Legrange point could be a viable con...
I'm wondering if it is plausible that a large asteroid (interstellar in origin? Or, perhaps launched from the Kuiper Belt by something big with a lot of gravity?) would be able to smash into Luna a...
I realize that creating worlds with multiple moons and/or suns is risky, but I'm toying with an idea to see where it goes. So, a planet has 3 moons. One is large like ours, the second is about half...
I am aware of being a newbie in the field I am asking my question... please be kind and explain what I did wrong if I make a mistake. The idea from where the problem bloom I love worldbuilding. W...
With Mars' color coming from the iron oxide, is it possible for such a small body without an atmosphere to support that color?
Assuming that the observer is on the moon for a full lunar cycle, would the appearance of the planet wax and wane, would the moon's shadow occlude the planet during an eclipse while on the moon?
I'm envisioning a series of moons in orbit of a super-earth (ideal) or gas giant. If technically workable, the super-earth would have earthlike gravity, the mass and size aren't important. If it's ...
I am trying to construct a standing stone calendar for my world Jasmi, located at latitude 53.8 degrees South. To do this, I need the hour angle of moonrise and moonset for my world. The problem is...
Would two moons of equal size and distance on opposite sides of a planet counteract each other's tidal pull?
I am building an idea for a terraformed environment with 1/6 the gravity of Earth, with a permanent human colony that has been established and sustained for 40+ years. I have thrown around a few id...
I'm trying to work out what the sky looks like on an Earth-like moon, in particular the length of day and apparent size of the other celestial bodies: the gas giant's size, the gas giant's other mo...
So to keep this simple, imagine a planet much like ours, orbiting a star. For the sake of this example, let's give the planet a 24 hour rotation, and a 364 day orbit around the star. Now, this pla...
The context: There is a population of people surviving on a lunar-analogue's surface, descended from the crew of a crashed spaceship. The rest of their society is not relevant to the question, but...
My question involves the earth being blown up using theoretical dark energy. In this scenario, the crust and mantle are destroyed by precisely placed weapons so that all that remains is the core. W...
And I mean only making the moon orbit the Earth faster: no change in distance from Earth required. Is such a thing possible?
Could a natural satellite in geosynchronous orbit be used as a counterweight for a space elevator? Does the counterweight need to be of approximately the same weight as the anchor? If so, I suppose...
I am considering writing a fantasy novel. This novel would be set on an earth-like planet, but certain story details require that the planet have either a much larger or much closer moon than Earth...
So SpaceX and the like are well underway to colonizing the Moon, but they've hit a snag. The colonists, of course, need water--and lots of it, for drinking, preparing food, growing plants, breathin...
Consider yourself a decision maker for a fledgling space infrastructure project. You've been tasked with establishing the first few extraterrestrial colonies for your species. What aspects of the...
My idea has been a colonized planet or moon with incredibly strong winds so that life is only possible in deep valleys protected from the wind. I recognize that wind is primarily driven by tempera...
In a lot of media one can see moons or other planets that cover a significant portion of the sky (like the background on this page for example). This could be because the moon is actually large or ...
Take the Jovian moon Ganymede as a real-world example. It has an orbital period of ~7 days around Jupiter, which is effectively its day and its year simultaneously. My characters will need the wo...
Given that the surface gravity on the Moon is a fraction of Earth and there is virtually zero atmospheric pressure but I still want to wet our beloved moon with whatever liquid that is known to sci...
How can I make a colonizable planet/moon that receives intense UV/x-ray radiation on parts of its surface while receiving much less on the rest of it? The most obvious way of doing this is to have...
