By what mechanism could a planet be locked into permanent solar eclipse?
I've got an image in my head of a world where it's just normal that the star is black with a golden halo around it - in other words, where the planet is in a state of perpetual solar eclipse.
Are there any mechanisms that could lead to this occurring naturally? It seems like a tidally-locked moon around a tidally-locked planet could produce such an effect, but I might be misunderstanding the dynamics of such an arrangement.
And if that would do it, is there anything preventing such a system from developing naturally?
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Note: My original answer was incorrect; tidal locking would not produce such a scenario. For an excellent explanation of why this is the case, see smithkm's answer. I want to leave in some notes regarding what would happen if there was somehow an object between the planet and the star. Not, though, that such a scenario is essentially impossible.
There would be some interesting effects due to this arrangement:
- Tides would be incredible - and not-existent. Tides are caused by the various alignments of the Sun, Moon and Earth. Tidal bulges are the result, and can vary depending upon their location relative to the Sun and Moon. This arrangement would mean that the moon is forever on one side of the planet, and so the tidal bulges are forever like the spring tides shown here:
- No change in the time of day. Well, this actually applies to any planet tidally locked to a star. One hemisphere would always be in sunlight, and one hemisphere would always be in shadow. It would be the same on the moon. One side would have a blazing view of the star, while the other would have a nice view of the planet.
- You could build a space elevator to the moon. I asked about building a space elevator between doubly tidally locked bodies on Space Exploration a while ago, and the answers seem to apply here. As HopDavid and aramis said, it's possible but not very feasible. Still, it would provide an interesting form of transportation, and a handy one. All you need is hundreds of thousands of kilometers of carbon nanotubes and a lot of luck.
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