Posts tagged moons
I have a world with a moon, much like Earth and the Moon, except that the planet is almost tidally locked to the moon. The moon therefore appears to move only very slowly through the sky, and take...
Have been building a game called Rise: The Vieneo Province. Vieneo is a terrestrial moon (all details can be found here) but we have an atmospheric composition we arrived on from another question:...
I am writing a story in which a planet has a moon that orbits it about once a minute. In the story, the moon is pretty bright too, so the night sky has a little bit of a slow strobe light effect: 3...
In the near future mankind could well permanently settle on the Moon. Whether for research or mining or just good old fashioned novelty is irrelevant. The colony includes: Large domed structu...
Ceraon is a moon with advanced megafauna and flora. The moon is pretty small, so gravity is only about one fifth of that on earth. Much of the life-preserving atmosphere is retained through a gre...
If the Earth had Saturn-like rings going around the equator would there still be a need for a moon? Would the rings be able to take care of the tides because of their gravity? Would the moon become...
Good afternoon! I'm working on a fantasy series set on a very small planet, roughly the size of Pluto or the Moon. I've already read some topics on the small earth-like planets, but mine's a bit un...
I'm curious as to what the implications to any navigation system are: ship trekking aviation etc. Will their compass change shape (as being spherical), or might they dump the compass alltogeth...
Is there a limit (and if so, what is it) to the size (mass) of terrestrial planet that could be "captured" as a moon by a migrating gas giant? I'm writing a novel where a colony ship crashes on su...
I'm trying to work with Dermott's Law to develop a generalized "formula" for assigning major moons to gas- and ice-giant planets, but it doesn't seem to work. If I use the values specified for Jup...
So we have had multiple questions on having multiple moons and this is another. I did check and didn't find questions that covered this specific setup. I have an earth-like world I am working on, ...
I've been looking for information on this, but I haven't come upon an answer that could actually help me figure this out: Imagine a planet, inhabited by somewhat "human" beings, that has one sun-l...
So in the story I'm trying to write, I'm having trouble getting the gravity on my fictional to seem realistic, and I would like to know if it seems technically possible? A group of astronauts tra...
So, I'm creating a jungle world that orbits a K class star (aka orange dwarf star), and is the second planet in the system. Now, I have the planet having two moons: one that is similar to our moon...
So given an inconceivably Earth-like planet with two moons in slightly differing orbits, how would the changed tidal system affect the wildlife? Specifically, What general type of marine wildlif...
I've been working on my story planet and have come up with an unlikely but possible scenario to help explain some of my stories origins as well as myths and folklore. Over the last day or so, I've ...
(edited to fix obvious confusion, as detected by AlexP) The idea is that the plane of the moon orbit is aproximately at a 90 degree angle to the plane of the planet orbit. Would that be stable, o...
Setup: Earth is the same (somehow, minus the tides -- don't overthink this bit) Moon is 2x the mass Moon is 2x closer Moon contains the derelict fissile fuel-dump of a hyper-advanced civil...
I watched Independence Day: Resurgence the other day. In it, Earth's first line of defense is a lunar base (that gets blown up), followed by an orbital satellite network (that gets blown up). Now...
So I writing a story where we terraform Titan using super heavy green house gases where the lower part of the atmosphere near the surface stays warmer. Because of this, a portion of the moon's icy ...
In the movie Oblivion, the Moon has been destroyed by invading aliens. Several shots of the moon show what is left: If the moon was somehow shattered like this, what would the effect be on Earth?
We know that planets can have multiple moons, sometimes quite a few (like Jupiter). Assuming that a planet with several moons were habitable in the first place and has significant oceans (greater ...
I'm working on a universe which implies that humanity settled on the Moon. Knowing that we want to keep contact with the Earth (means we don't want to settle on the hidden face) and we want to avo...
Imagine an Earth-like planet with a moon that is closer to the planet than ours with a lunar cycle of 18-19 days. I am trying to imagine how this different cycle would affect human beings and anima...
Picture a planet identical to Earth, but with rings. It has a satellite similar to the moon, except smaller; I'm not sure how big it needs to be but distance from the planet is more important so ...
What would be the effects of an Earth-like planet with a longer year and longer lunar orbit? I have a planet with 432 days in a year and a lunar cycle of 36 days, with 12 months at 36 days each. Th...
I am building a world where a rogue moon (or rogue planet or other larger celestial body) partially crashes into the main planet; the the residual shards would then form a smaller moon which become...
The planet I'm working with has two different moons, both around the same size (3/4ths that of the main planet). Is it possible for the planet to support the orbit of these moons, especially with t...
I'm building an alien world for a game mod, and want to avoid any blatant mistakes from a world-building perspective. The world has three moons visible in the night sky - two on one side near each ...
I have a planet with two moons. I want them on opposite sides during the equinoxes and together during the solstices. The seasons are a little lopsided, with spring and autumn having 90 days and th...
My novel is set on a planet covered in 90% water with no moons. How would the lack of natural satellites effect the waves and wind?
I'll be honest here; I don't know much about the physics of planets and planetary systems, etc. However, I've been looking into ellipsoidal moons, and most of what I've found is about Nix, one of P...
The world will going to be the homeworld of an hairless feline humanoid race, but I want to see the plausibility of this scenario?
Worldbuilder in dire need! I'm trying to figure out the eclipse length of a habitable Earth-like moon that is rotating around a gas giant. The story that I work on is centered on the Earth-like mo...
My theory is that if a moon's orbit is situated in between the exoplanet and a second satellite, tidal heating could occur and turn the moon into a sustainable heat source for the host planet. Coul...
The setting is Earth with the ordinary moon moving as per usual, but this planet also has a moon with stronger tidal pull that moves in an elliptical orbit and comes to its closest point to Earth e...
Assume that Amazon has set up a processing station on the Moon for whatever motive as a way to ship things out to space (Mars, etc.) faster and more efficiently. How much time today and perhaps i...
If we had to keep a channel for lunar communication with modern technology such that it was always open regardless of earth-moon positioning, how would we do it?
A simple question, could a moon exist and stay whole if it was inside the ring of asteroids orbiting a planet? And as a side note, would it create a kind of bulge in the ring where the asteroids su...
My Kepler Bb planet has 4 moons and is habitable. So that is good. But all 4 of these moons are major moons which while indeed possible, could be a problem. You see, these moons are in resonance s...
If the moon had life and it progressed at the same rate as life on earth, including key points of technological discovery. When would we, on earth, have first detected them? Technological discover...
I know that moon composition and atmosphere (if it exists) will influence how reflective a moon is, but I was hoping for a fairly exhaustive list of materials that moons are actually made of, how r...
I am looking for help on the following: Will that have any affect on the length of days and nights? Would having two moons create a higher body of water on the planet due to increased tides? (i....
I sometimes tell my kid that when he grows up, he might be living on the moon. Last night he was worried that Santa won't be able to bring him presents there. To which I replied that sure, Santa ca...
Take the earth-moon system. Shift the moon's orbital plane about 90 degrees so that it is passes over both poles. What would the tides on this world look like? Sub-questions: What would the cy...
I've read this question, but most of its answers don't seem to apply to my question directly other than possibly this one, which suggests that in order to change a planet's orbit, you would have to...
Now a solid body of rock will collapse itself to a round shape when it hits about 600 km in diameter (400 km for ice). Now, the Second Death Star is estimated to be between 160 and 900 km. How big ...
On Earth, the presence of tides due to the Sun and Moon influence certain currents and other movements of water. This in turn leads to different forms of erosion, which can transform a landscape. ...
If we made a large moon near Mars, the tidal forces would encourage the tectonic system to rev up again, and start up the inner dynamo effect. There would be volcanoes, producing a new atmosphere, ...
I've asked before about my polytheists with competing moon gods. I now have a better understanding of how tides -- a very visible manifestation of lunar influence -- work with multiple moons (than...
