Can a planet's axial tilt turn to always be facing its star?
In my particular scenario, There is an habitable exoplanet in which the axial tilt turns to always face the system's star, and the planet is not in tidal lock, this allows for a certain range of scenarios which i would like to explore, such as the perpetual days and nights in the poles, and the much shorter (or longer) daytime periods in any point above or below the equator, and how any native lifeforms would have adapted to survive such a peculiar system.
In short, i'd like to know if it is possible for the tilt to always be the same relative to the stars center of mass (instead of the position of background stars which are relatively unmoving) and if the planet would need or can absolutely not have any other orbiting bodies? would the planet have to orbit the star, or would the star have to orbit the planet? what would be the planet's required mass? what would be the stars required mass? would for that particular system the star and the planet have to be orbiting each other in a pseudo-binary system?
For any other clarification, this particular scenario is a rough mash of light sci-fi and magic fantasy, so if theoretically this planet could exist with some changes to the basic rules of the universe without completely tearing the universe apart, please do tell me! even if this planet is completely impossible, any information that i could obtain will come useful in any future worldbuilding scenarios.
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/91506. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
0 comment threads