Seasons and Day/Night Cycles on Horseshoe Habitable Worlds?

In the latest Artifexian video, he talked about terrestrial moons, bringing up great ways they could and would exist. But the video ended with an interesting concept, Horseshoe Habitable Moons.

From Wikipedia:

A horseshoe orbit is a type of co-orbital motion of a small orbiting body relative to a larger orbiting body (such as Earth). The orbital period of the smaller body is very nearly the same as for the larger body, and its path appears to have a horseshoe shape in a rotating reference frame as viewed from the larger object.

The loop is not closed but will drift forward or backward slightly each time, so that the point it circles will appear to move smoothly along the larger body's orbit over a long period of time. When the object approaches the larger body closely at either end of its trajectory, its apparent direction changes. Over an entire cycle the center traces the outline of a horseshoe, with the larger body between the 'horns'.

Artifexian pointed out the interesting features twin habitable worlds in a coinciding horseshoe orbit and it made me wonder, What would Seasons and day/night cycles on habitable worlds be like if they existed in a horseshoe orbit?

posted almost 8 years ago

Uncle Tres‭

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